Magpie

Saturday, April 29

FBI agents going crazy.

Crazy for national security letters, that is.

National security letters are a special subpoena that lets the feds get at bank, phone, and internet records without having to get the approvoal of a judge. Ever since original Patriot Act made it much easier for the FBI to issue the letters, civil libertarians have warned that abuses would be inevitable. As we are finding out, those fears appear to be well-grounded.

According to a report just released to Congress by the Justice Department, the FBI used national security letters 9254 times during 2005, examining records for 3051 people in the US. That figure is up 15% over 2004.

The numbers were released under a provision of this year's Patriot Act renewal, and was one of the few meaningful concessions extracted by Democrats in return for that renewal. Previously, statistics on national security letters were classified and released only selectively to members of Congress.

The new information on the letters drew immediate criticism from ACLU legislative counsel Lisa Graves: "Now we can see why the administration was so eager to hide the number."

For more on how the feds are using national security letters, see this earlier post.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:43 AM | Get permalink

Playing president.

Journalist Robert Scheer has been around a long time. I first read his work in the 1960s, when he was writing for Ramparts [an excellent New Left magazine]. From the mid=1970s until earlier this year, he was national correspondent and a contributing editor for the LA Times. These days, Scheer hangs his hat mainly at The Nation and TruthDig.
Robert Scheer's book, Playing President

Scheer has covered every president since Richard Nixon, and has done in-depth interview with all of them — with the notable and not surprising exception of the current occupant of the Oval Office. Scheer has taken what he learned from those interviews and from being a close observer of the US poltical process and written a book, Playing President: My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I, Reagan and Clinton -- and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush. The book examines how the presidency has changed over the past three decades, especially how television has affected the way presidents govern and the way that the press covers — or doesn't cover — important political issues.

Over at AlterNet, Onnesha Roychoudhuri has an excellent interview with Scheer about his book, the presidents he has met, and why US politics are so screwed up. You should read more than just the excerpt here.

OR: Has it been frustrating for you -- to see the same issues that plague our country come up time and again? Are you hopeful, or have you become more cynical?

RS: It is true that the same issues come up, and we don't make as much progress as we could. Immigration is a good example. I've been covering immigration for 40 years now. The truth of the matter is quite simple: If you don't want people coming here, don't have the jobs. The way not to have the jobs is to enforce the labor laws and to go after employers. Politicians aren't going to do that because they're important sectors of the economy that are dependent upon this cheap labor force.

Every four or five years, we get some new hysteria about immigration when the fact is that undocumented workers, illegal immigrants, are contributing much more to society than taking out. Anyone who really studies it knows that, but you can find all kinds of ways of using it to fan the flames of hysteria. It's a sign of progress that there was a recent outpouring of people who know better, particularly people in the immigrant communities. They stopped Congress from doing some terrible mischief.

There's the same old national security hysteria, the call for bigger and bigger defense budgets when we're trying to stop people who use box cutters and primitive knives to capture airplanes. But there are signs of progress: sites like AlterNet, MoveOn, Buzzflash and Truthdig, where you can go to get alternative information.

OR: You say in your book that George W. Bush is the first electronically projected president. Can you explain that?

RS: This administration doesn't feel they need a mindful audience. They don't care about facts, logic or consequences. They are the most cynical people that I've ever encountered in politics. This is the most cynical bunch -- just think about that "reality-based community" quote. They create their own reality. I don't think I've ever seen that kind of cynicism before, and I'm the guy who interviewed Richard Nixon.

These guys are, as John Dean keeps pointing out, far worse than the Nixon crowd because they think they can get away with it. Nixon, at the end of the day thought it mattered what the New York Times said. He felt that if there was a big contradiction, a big error, they would catch him and there would be all hell to pay.

There's no longer that feeling. Over the years, I'm not getting cynical -- they're cynical. If I were truly cynical I wouldn't be talking to you, and I wouldn't be writing and teaching. Mark Twain said a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth puts its pants on. Well, the fact is the truth does get its pants on, it does catch up, and right now 65 percent of Americans think Bush lied to them.

You can read the rest of the interview here. In addition, AlterNet has posted an excerpt from Playing Politics that you can read here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:01 AM | Get permalink

Friday, April 28

Warning! Warning!

You might already be a terrorist. No, really!

Are you a terrorist?

Excerpt from 'Terrorism: What the Public Needs to Know' leaflet
from Texas Department of Public Safety.

I dunno about you, but that list alone pretty much puts this magpie on the terrorist watch list.

Via MoJo Blog and InfoWars.com.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:46 PM | Get permalink

That sure settles the question, doesn't it?

Our Dear Leader eases the country's anger over oil industry price gouging:

"I have no evidence that there is any rip-off taking place," Bush told reporters at the White House.

Of course he doesn't have any evidence that a rip-off is taking place. The guys running the oil companies are the prez's buddies and he can overlook any amount of criminality and incompetence on the part of his cronies.

Anyway, this administration has gutted the regulatory process to the point that anything the oil companies could be sending out squads of pickpockets to take our money directly and it wouldn't be illegal. And since the hallmark of a rip-off is illegality, the oil companies can't possibly be ripping the country off, can they?

Via Reuters.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:57 AM | Get permalink

It's déjà vu all over again.

Dubya is obviously one of those folks who believes that if you do the same thing over and over, eventually the result will be different.

President Bush is expected on Friday to announce his approval of a deal under which a Dubai-owned company would take control of nine plants in the United States that manufacture parts for American military vehicles and aircraft, say two administration officials familiar with the terms of the deal....

[The] plants in question are owned by Doncasters Group Ltd., a British company that is being purchased for $1.2 billion from the Royal Bank of Scotland Group by Dubai International Capital, which is owned by the United Arab Emirate government.

The NY Times has the full details here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:58 AM | Get permalink

Going to where the buck really stops.

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman isn't buying the idea that getting rid of FEMA and replacing it with some new agency will make things all better. FEMA's botched response to Hurricane Katrina wasn't a fluke — it was the predictable result of Dubya's penchant for placing incompetent cronies into positions of authority.

The history of FEMA and other agencies during the Clinton years shows that a president who is serious about governing can rebuild effective government without renaming the boxes on the organizational chart.

On the other hand, the history of the Bush administration, from the botched reconstruction of Iraq to the botched start-up of the prescription drug program, shows that a president who isn't serious about governing, who prizes loyalty and personal connections over competence, can quickly reduce the government of the world's most powerful nation to third-world levels of ineffectiveness....

So let's skip the name change for FEMA, O.K.? The United States will regain effective government if and when it gets a president who cares more about serving the nation than about rewarding his friends and scoring political points. That's at least a thousand days away. Meanwhile, don't count on FEMA, or on any other government agency, to do its job.

If you're a NY Times subscriber, you can read the rest of the column here. If not, I suggest following this link. [Thanks, Peking Duck!]

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:32 AM | Get permalink

Shutting up those damn critics.

It's no secreat that Dubya's administration repeatedly ignored dissenting views in the intelligence community when making important foreign policy decisions — especially those regarding Iraq. In typical style, the administration has figured out how to deal solve this embarrassing political problem: Get rid of the dissenting views.

According to reporter Shane Harris, the CIA has put new restrictions on the publications by former employees who still do contract work with the agency.

According to several former CIA officials affected by the new policy, the rules are intended to suppress criticism of the Bush administration and of the CIA. The officials say the restrictions amount to an unprecedented political "appropriateness" test at odds with earlier CIA policies on outside publishing.

The move is a significant departure from the CIA's longtime practice of allowing ex-employees to take critical or contrary positions in public, particularly when they are contractors paid to advise the CIA on important topics and to publish their assessments.

Like a lot of Dubya administration policy decisions, it's unlikely that the new CIA rule will silence critics.

"If this is the direction in which it's going ... the agency would be shooting itself in the foot," said one former official who was involved in contracting with outside experts to solicit reviews of draft intelligence assessments. "At a time when the agency is being criticized at least as much as it ever has for 'groupthink,' unchallenged assumptions, and not practicing alternative analysis rigorously, this is one of the last changes it ought to be making."

The former official predicted, "Those contractors who tend to express opposing viewpoints would be among the first to terminate their contracts." If they bolt, the agency's efforts will have been for naught: The CIA will have lost them, and they'll publish their writings anyway, because the new policy review doesn't apply to former employees who don't have CIA contracts, the former official explained.

The full article is here.

Via National Journal.

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

Thursday, April 27

Aljazeera's new channel not ready for primetime.

I've been one of those who's been anxiously waiting to get a look at Aljazeera International, the new English-language news channel from the well-known Arab satellite broadcaster. It was supposed to be going on the air sometime in the next few weeks, but the latest news is that the debut is being delayed at least until sometime in the summer.
Ajazeera logo

Some of the reason for the delay is technical. Aljazeera International's broadcasts will be originating from studios in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London, and Washington and will have correspondents in 30 countries. Obviously, setting up this kind of operation isn't the easiest task in the world. Another reason for the delay is problems getting onto the air in North America. So far, Aljazeera hasn't been able to find a distributor willing to carry their channel.

But, says journalist and media analyst Lawrence Pintak, internal disputes at Aljazeera are playing a big role in the delay. Those disputes center on the new channel's content — especially on how its news coverage will differ from established channels such as the BBC and CNN — and on who exactly will be staffing Aljazeera Internationl.

Interviews with staffers reveal two core concerns about the new channel. First is the question of credibility. Given the Bush administration's dislike of al-Jazeera, the new English version will be under a microscope, with the station's critics waiting to pounce. The fear among al-Jazeera staffers is that, in its eagerness to make its own mark, the new channel will make journalistic mistakes, which will reflect poorly on the Arabic channel.

Second, al-Jazeera has earned a reputation for defending the Arab cause and standing up to both the U.S. and authoritarian Arab regimes. AJI is unlikely to maintain such a stance. "Many are afraid it will not reflect the honest channel these people have sacrificed for," one staffer told me.

Feeding the disquiet is the fact that Parsons, a British television veteran who has been involved in two other satellite channel startups, talks of bringing a "global" perspective to the news, with studios in London, Doha, Kuala Lumpur and Washington, D.C. each anchoring part of the day. "We're an Arab channel," says one al-Jazeera reporter. "We're supposed to bring an Arab perspective to the news, not a 'global' perspective."

Back in the fall, Parsons proudly told me that the staff would ultimately be made up of journalists from more than thirty countries. In the months since, the perception has grown in Arab media circles that AJI is simply not interested in hiring more than a few token Arabs. Along with Parsons, the top news and current affairs executives and all the bureau chiefs come from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S. On-air personalities like British talk show host David Frost, CNN's Riz Khan and Dave Marash of ABC News were signed to much fanfare. And while hiring decisions in any business are rarely transparent and sour grapes among those who are turned down is common, some very qualified, English-speaking Arab journalists who applied to the new channel told me they were, essentially, shown the door.

Disquiet boiled over into open anger during an al-Jazeera forum on media freedom in January. At a news conference to showcase the new channel, Parsons was asked about the deaths of al-Jazeera staffers and other Arab journalists at the hands of U.S. troops in Iraq. The British manager replied that they were "regrettable," but stopped short of condemning them or the imprisonment of other al-Jazeera employees in Spain and Guantánamo Bay. Arab staffers were enraged. To them, it smacked of appeasement -- and a sign of things to come.

Via CJR Daily.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:41 AM | Get permalink

And FEMA's hits just keep on coming.

After the Hurricane Katrina, the feds promised year-long housing vouchers to families that were forced out of their homes. Those vouchers paid for both rent and utilities while evacuees waited for their homes to be rebuilt.

Now the brilliant minds at FEMA have decided to pull the plug on the housing vouchers of 55,000 families. FEMA claims that it never promised to provide help for a full year. Officials in Houston and other cities that took large numbers of evacuees say that FEMA is lying.

To make matters worse, advocates and local officials say, many evacuees either do not know why they have been found ineligible or have been given spurious reasons. Many notices do not even give a deadline, saying only, "You will not be asked to leave before April 30."

"We believe that many of the people who received notice that they're ineligible are eligible," said Mayor Bill White of Houston, where more than 9,000 of the 35,000 families on vouchers have been determined to be unqualified, raising fears of mass homelessness....

[FEMA's actions have] created widespread confusion among evacuees. A disabled evacuee in Little Rock said that when she called FEMA to ask why her rent was no longer being paid she was informed, erroneously, that she had never had a voucher. In Memphis, where there are 1,500 families on vouchers, FEMA initially asked those running the program to reclaim the furniture and basic kitchen items issued to evacuees, backing down after strenuous objections, said Susan Adams, the executive director of the Memphis and Shelby County Community Services Agency.

"It feels like a total lack of compassion," Ms. Adams said. "A total lack of humanity."

Via NY Times.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:18 AM | Get permalink

New Orleans: Situation bad, and getting worse.

New Orleans civil rights/human rights lawyer Bill Quigley paints a mainly bleak picture of what things are like in the Big Easy eight months after Hurricane Katrina.

300,000 people still have not been able to return to the city. This is more than half of New Orleans pre-Katrina population.
The turnout in the ercent city electons was only 36 percent of registered voters. Not surprisingly, turnout was high in the wealthier and whiter parts of the city [largely undamaged] and very low in poor, black areas. Despite the dispersion of the city's pre-Katrina population to other states, there were not satellite voting stations in places like Houston or Atlanta. The disappearance of New Orleans' black voters will have repercussions in statewide elections, where Democrats have relied on heavy support from the city to eke out narrow victories.
New Orleans has lost almost 80 percent of its primary care doctors, and only slightly smaller percentages of its dentists and psychiatrists. The city's remaining hospitals are seriously overburdened and patient waiting times have skyrocketed.
Most of the money that's poured into the city for rebuilding has been sucked up by out-of-state contractors and subcontractors. The people who actually do the work are get around 25 cents out of each rebuilding dollar paid to contractors. Many of the contractors appear to have gotten work on the basis of their contributions to the GOP, not on any demonstrated ability to get work done in New Orleans.
Almost all of the federal money going to New Orleans is paying for private housing, and the percentage of money targeted for low and middle income housing has been cut. Most public housing destroyed by the hurricane will not be replaced. Current plans call for 700 replacement units — there were over 7300 public housing units before Katrina.

That's only a part the story that Quigley tells in his article. You can read it here.

Via truthout.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:29 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, April 26

The end-all of hurricane stories.

Frances Hodge of Copeland, Florida is 99 years old. She's a survivor.

When Hurricane Wilma struck Copeland last year, Miss Frances survived, even though the same couldn't quite be said about her trailer. Given her age, you'd think that local authorities would have gotten her into a new trailer fast.

Miss Frances and her new trailer

Frances Hodge on the porch of her new trailer, which may or may not finally be ready for habitation. [Photo: AP]

You'd be quite wrong, though.

Via Dees Diversion.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:06 AM | Get permalink

Thank god someone is protecting the country from those teen sex cults.

While countries such as Canada have made emergency contraception easily available, women in the US are still waiting for the Food and Drug Administration to end the current need to get a prescription for the drug [Plan B]. The FDA rejected unrestricted sales of Plan B in 2004, and has repeatedly delayed making a decision as to whether to allow over-the-counter sales for women age 16 and over. These delays, evidence shows, are largely due to pressure from right-wing religious groups who oppose any form of contraception.

The federal district court in Brooklyn, New York is currently hearing a lawsuit brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is asking the court to order the FDA to immediately approve over-the-counter sales of Plan B. Some of the documents that have surfaced during the discovery phase of the trial are, to put it mildly, very interesting:

Simon Heller, one of the attorneys, plans to quiz [former deputy FDA commissioner Janet] Woodcock about a March 23, 2004, staff memo suggesting she was concerned Plan B might lead to teenage promiscuity.

The FDA is only supposed to consider the safety and efficacy of drugs.

In the memo released by the FDA during the discovery process, Dr. Curtis Rosebraugh, an agency medical officer, wrote: "As an example, she stated that we could not anticipate, or prevent extreme promiscuous behaviors such as the medication taking on an 'urban legend' status that would lead adolescents to form sex-based cults centered around the use of Plan B." [Emphasis mine]

You read that right. Woodock wanted to bar over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception because teenagers might use Plan B in sex cults.

That's the state of science — not to mention the rights of women — in Dubya's administration.

Via Newsday.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:01 AM | Get permalink

Death on the job.

Tomorrow, April 28th, is Workers Memorial Day in the US. Since 1989, it has been a day for remembering the lives of who've died while on their jobs. For the last 15 years, the AFL-CIO has marked the day by issuing a report on workplace health and safety called Death on the Job. This year's report has just come out and, sadly, its contents are as grim as usual.

Here's part of the introduction:

Since 1970, when the OSH Act was passed, workplace safety and health conditions have improved. Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the Sago mine disaster in January 2006, too many workers remain at risk, and face death, injury or disease as a result of their jobs.

Progress in protecting workers? safety and health is slowing, and for some groups of workers jobs are becoming more dangerous. The most recent job fatality data (2004) show an increase in fatal workplace injuries with 5,703 fatal injuries reported in 2004, including significant increases in fatalities among Hispanic and foreign-born workers. As the economy, the workforce and hazards are changing, we are falling further and further behind in our efforts to protect workers from new and existing problems.

Under the Bush administration, regulatory activity at both the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) has ground to a halt. Important standards close to completion at the end of the Clinton administration? including a standard on employer payment for personal protective equipment?have been withdrawn or delayed repeatedly by the Bush administration. Overall, dozens of OSHA and MSHA standards were pulled from the administration?s regulatory agenda, including MSHA standards on mine rescue teams, self contained self rescue devices and escape ways and refuges which may have helped to prevent the fatalities at the Sago mine disaster.

New and emerging hazards, including risks to workers from bioterrorist threats and pandemic
flu, are not being adequately addressed.

The dollar amounts of both federal and state OSHA penalties and MSHA penalties are woefully inadequate.

As we did when last year's report came out, I'm going to crib from Jordan Barab's post on the report at his blog Confined Space [which is by far the best blog on worker's health and safety there is]. Since Barab spent 16 years running AFSCME's health and safety program, he knows what he's talking about.

5,703 workers were killed in the workplace due to traumatic injuries in 2004, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. This is an increase from the number of deaths in 2003, when 5,575 workplace deaths were reported. The rate of fatal injuries was 4.1 per 100,000 workers in 2004 compared to 4.0 per 100,000 workers in 2003, a 2 percent increase. The increase in the fatality rate in 2004 was the first increase in the national fatality rate since 1994.

Fatalities among foreign-born and native born Hispanic workers increased in 2004. Fatalities among Hispanic workers increased by 11 percent over 2003, with 883 fatalities among this group of workers. The rate of fatal injuries to Hispanic or Latino workers increased from 4.5 per 100,000 workers in 2003 to 4.9 per 100,000 workers in 2004, a 9 percent increase. The fatality rate among Hispanic or Latino workers in 2004 was 19 percent higher than the fatal injury rate for all U.S. workers.

4.3 million injuries and illnesses were reported in private-sector workplaces in 2004, a slight decrease from 4.4 million in 2003. The manufacturing sector had the most injuries, accounting for 22 percent of the total, while health care and social assistance workers accounted for 16 percent of injuries and illnesses, followed by the retail trade at 15%.

There were over 400,000 musculoskeletal disorder cases (back, shoulder, wrist pain and disability) in 2004, again accounting for nearly one-third of all injuries and illnesses involving days away from work. (Note that OSHA has estimated that for every MSD reported, there is another that was not reported.)

There's a lot more detail on the report in Barab's full post, which I highly suggest you go read.

You can read the full Death on the Job report here, or download a PDF file containing the report here.

Via Confined Space.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:00 AM | Get permalink

Tuesday, April 25

Canada gets its own Dubya.

Sadly, it's not because Dubya has decamped to Canada. Instead, our Dear Leader's spirit has gone north as Canada's new Conservative party governnment acts more and more like its counterpart in Washington.

PM Stephen Harper has already faced criticism for his gutting of Canada's Climate Change Program and his Environment minister's order preventing a government scientist from speaking about his novel about climate change. This is pretty familar stuff for us in the US, who've watched years of Dubya rolling back envrionmental protection and silencing scientist who disagree with the administration's party line.

Harper is stepping up his emulation of our Dear Leader in the wake of the deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan on Saturday. The bodies of those soldiers are being returned to Canada tonight and Harper's government has banned press coverage of that return — much like Dubya's administration has barred the press from the return of the bodies of US soldiers from Iran and Afghanistan. Up until now, the press has always covered the ceremonies when soldiers' bodies come home.

Opposition MPs immediately accused the Prime Minister of adopting American-style tactics to limit public exposure to Canada's mounting death toll — now at 16 — in Afghanistan.

"I can't imagine any other Canadian prime minister trying to manipulate public opinion by hiding the caskets of fallen soldiers," said Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh (Vancouver South), the party's defence critic.

"He has borrowed a page from Bush's book," Dosanjh said, accusing the government of following practices of the George W. Bush administration, which has sought to limit media coverage when American casualties are brought home from Iraq.

"I find it absolutely un-Canadian," Dosanjh said. "He hopes that out of sight is out of mind. Canadians are not going to accept that."

It's also known the Prime Minister's Office is not happy having reporters embedded with the military in Afghanistan because of the high profile the mission is getting back home. Yesterday's action spurred further questions on whether the government will bar media from the Afghanistan mission entirely.

The press ban comes as criticism of Canada's involvement in Afghanistan is rising, both in the press and among the Canadian public at large. One would think that Harper could just look over the border to see how Dubya's attempts to 'manage' the Iraq war has resulted in record low approval ratings. However, it appears that the PM's reported admiration of the US presidential system may be making him just as blind to the consequences of his decisions as Dubya has been.

Via Reuters, Toronto Star, and rabble.

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

Uh, I think the Democrats think they've found their big issue for November.

US House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi rips Dubya a new one for his failure to deal with rising gasoline and fuel oil prices:

If you want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and therefore improve our national security situation, you can't do it if you're a Republican because you are too wedded to the oil companies. We have two oilmen in the white house. The logical follow-up from that is $3 a gallon gasoline. There is no accident. It is a cause and effect. A cause and effect.

How dare the president of the United States make a speech today in April, many, many, many months after the american people have had to undergo the cost of home heating oil. A woman told me she almost fainted when she received her home heating bill over this Winter. And when so many people making the minimum wage, which hasn't been raised in eight years, which has a very low purchasing power have to go out and buy gasoline at these prices? Where have you been, Mr. President?

The middle class squeeze is on, competition in our country is affected by the price of energy and of oil and all of a sudden you take a trip outside of Washington, see the fact that the public is outraged about this, come home and make a speech. Let's see that matched in your budget, let's see that matched in your policy, let's see that ... you're separating yourselves yourself from your patron, big oil. Cut yourself off from that anvil holding your party down and this country down, instead of coming to Washington and throwing your Republican colleagues under the wheels of the train, which they mightily deserve for being a rubber stamp for your obscene, corrupt policy of ripping off the American people. [Emphasis mine]

Via Suburban Guerrilla.

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:58 PM | Get permalink

Dubya's administration piles up more of those amazing 'coincidences.'

Tell me that these two AP stories about actions taken today by Dubya and ~~his accomplices~~ federal regulators aren't just crying out for the dots to be connected.

First, there's this one about how Dubya's responding to high gas prices:

President Bush on Tuesday ordered a temporary suspension of environmental rules for gasoline, making it easier for refiners to meet demand and possibly dampen prices at the pump....

Easing the environment rules will allow refiners greater flexibility in providing oil supplies since they will not have to use certain additives such as ethanol to meet clean air standards....

And then there's this one about how Dubya's administration is responding to California's strict new rules for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles:

Federal officials said Wednesday that new national mileage standards would pre-empt state rules on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, a move that takes aim at California's first-in-the-nation limits on such pollution.

State air regulators voted unanimously in September 2004 to approve rules that would cut exhaust from California's cars and light trucks by 25 percent and from larger trucks and sport utility vehicles by 18 percent.

The Bush administration said Tuesday that such regulations were "expressly pre-empted" by the new federal standards....

The [National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] said the federal standards trumped state rules in introducing new mileage regulations requiring modest improvements in fuel efficiency for vans, pickup trucks and SUVs.

Do you notice what the administration's two actions today have in common? Yep, they both get rid of rules designed to cut air pollution.

And who benefits? Not the people who have to breathe the air or have to pay for the environmental and medical side effects of the added pollution, that's for sure. But automakers and oil companies stand to make a lot of bucks: Automakers as a result of not having to comply with California pollution rules that would eat into their profit margins — especially on SUVs, which have been the main source of US auto industry profits since the late 1990s. And oil companies will undoubtedly fail to pass on any savings that would result from having to start adding ethanol to gasoline this summer.

Suspicious types would probably look at those two AP stories and say that big business was raking it in while the rest of us get screwed. But here at Magpie, we know better than that.

Yes, we've found another amazing coincidence!

| | Posted by Magpie at 1:14 PM | Get permalink

Look what they found in Davy Jones' locker.

Well, a mile or so beneath Davy Jones locker, actually.

A drilling crew looking for oil in the the North Sea off Norway was surprised by what came up in a drill core the other day. It was Norway's first dinosaur fossil, and the deepest dinosaur fossil found anywhere in the world.

The deepest dinosaur bone

The crushed plateosaurus knucklebone found off Norway [left]
and a whole plateosaurus [right].

What drillers found was the knucklebone of a plateosaurus, an early plant-eating dinosaur that lived in Europe and Greenland about 200 million years ago. The fossil was brought up from 2256 meters below the sea bottom — 1.4 miles in US terms. Given that the North Sea was once a plain broken by meandering streams and rivers, it's likely that there are more fossils down there — although it's rather unlikely that any of them will be found by paleontologists other than as an accidental result of oil drilling.

Via Science Daily and PhysOrg.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:49 AM | Get permalink

You know those pharmacists whose consciences won't let them dispense emergency contraception?

Seattle's The Stranger weekly reports on how some pharmacists in Washington state have refused to dispense abortion-related antibiotics and vitamins to patients of Cedar River Clinics, an abortion provider.

A big Magpie thank-you to Ann at Feministing.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:32 AM | Get permalink

Oil for 12 bucks a barrel.

Remember how toppling Saddam Hussein was going to bring back the days of cheap oil?

What? You don't?

That's okay. I'm sure that the Iraq hawks who were peddling that sort of nonsense back in 2002 and early 2003 [conveniently] don't remember what they were saying back then. And they'd certainly be glad to know that you don't remember stuff like the following, either.

The Wall Street Journal opined:

Of course, the largest benefit--a more stable Mideast--is huge but unquantifiable. A second plus, lower oil prices, is somewhat more measurable. The premium on 11.5 million barrels imported every day by the U.S. is a transfer from us to producing countries. Postwar, with Iraqi production back in the pipeline and calmer markets, oil prices will fall even further. If they drop to an average in the low $20s, the U.S. economy will get a boost of $55 billion to $60 billion a year.

That's just one of the gems of forgotten Iraq war history that Blah3 has kindly unearthed for our edification. Make sure to go check out the rest.

Via NewsHog.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:01 AM | Get permalink

Monday, April 24

Keeping the internet free.

Matt Stoller has everything you need to know:

Background on the Issue: The internet is open because private companies haven't been allowed to block content they don't like. Now the telcos want to make it so they can block what you see.

The Threat to You is real: Telcos have already blocked competing services, censored emails, and prevented customers from reading political web sites. Why do you assume they care about your rights?

Come On, This Isn't Really Happening: Fine, don't believe me. Ignore the fact that the CEO of AT&T is on record that this is going to happen. You can pretend that this won't affect you, if you want.

'Net Neutrality': A Simple Explanation: Annoying tech issue, maybe, but you can watch this this simple video explanation.

Explaining the Players in the Fight: It's a corporate cartel with bought and paid lobbyists versus a free market and citizens groups.

Can we win this fight? Yes, we can. Congress isn't that set on giving away the internet. They just don't understand the issues involved and don't think anyone's paying attention.

What You Should Link to:
SavetheInternet.com
Moveon Petition
Save the Internet on MySpace

You should also go over to this post and scroll down the comments until you find the press release from the right-wing outfit, FreedomWorks. If you're not already convinced about the need to preserve net neutrality, that should change your mind.

Via MyDD.

| | Posted by Magpie at 3:24 PM | Get permalink

Pop quiz!

Here's the beginning of an excellent article on how religious conservatives have the US government peddling a 'moral agenda' instead of providing accurate health care information.

For the past 15 years, Ruth Shaber, M.D., has been an ob-gyn in San Francisco for Kaiser Permanente, one of the nation's largest health maintenance organizations. She sees all types of women?union members, executives, waitresses. Most of them, Dr. Shaber says, have questions for her, including how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases, how to preserve their fertility, how to prevent breast and cervical cancer and whether the latest Internet health scare they've heard is really true.

Dr. Shaber tries hard to separate fact from fiction because, she says, "rumor and hearsay can start to seem real." In the past, she'd sometimes refer patients to government websites and printed fact sheets, or rely on those outlets to help create her own materials. Not anymore. "As a physician, I can no longer trust government sources," says Dr. Shaber. She is not a political activist or a conspiracy theorist; in addition to her own practice, she's Kaiser Permanente's director of women's health services for northern California and head of the HMO's Women's Health Research Institute. Yet this decidedly mainstream doctor and administrator says, "I no longer trust FDA decisions or materials generated [by the government]. Ten years ago, I would not have had to scrutinize government information. Now I don't feel comfortable giving it to my patients."

Such doctor mistrust represents a major change. For the past 100 years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been the world's premier government agency ensuring drug safety. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have similarly stellar track records. But recently, Dr. Shaber charges, the government has lost its most precious asset: credibility.

Quick! Identify the source of the article.

Give up? It's from the current issue of Glamour. Yes, that Glamour. And yes, my jaw dropped, too.

You can read the whole thing here. And you really should read it all. It's one of the best summaries I've seen of how right-wing Christian activists have taken control of the FDA, HHS, and other federal agencies that govern how the US medical system deals with women's health care issues.

Via Bitch Ph.d.

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

Worried about your changing body?

So is the US Attorney General!

If you watch this short film, you'll feel much better.

Snort!

[Grab from video by Hal Lublin & Ken Laws]

Thanks to Broadsheet for pointing this one out.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:14 AM | Get permalink

Can you say 'impeach'?

I think we've reached smoking gun territory after Ed Bradley's interview with former CIA officer Tyler Drumheller that ran on Sunday's edition of the CBS news program 60 Minutes. Take a look at this part of the transcript:

BRADLEY: [In October 2002,] the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq's nuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq's foreign minister, had made a deal to reveal Iraq's military secrets to the CIA. Tyler Drumheller was in charge of the operation.

DRUMHELLER: This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein, someone who would know what he was talking about.

BRADLEY: You knew you could trust this guy?

DRUMHELLER: We continued to validate him the whole way through.

BRADLEY: According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high level meeting at the White House.

DRUMHELLER: The President, the Vice President, Dr. Rice?

BRADLEY: And at that meeting?

DRUMHELLER: They were enthusiastic because they said they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis.

BRADLEY: And what did this high level source tell you?

DRUMHELLER: He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program.

BRADLEY: So, in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?

DRUMHELLER: Yes.

BRADLEY: There's no doubt in your mind about that?

DRUMHELLER: No doubt in my mind at all.

BRADLEY: It directly contradicts, though, what the President and his staff were telling us.

DRUMHELLER: The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.

BRADLEY: Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from the Iraqi foreign minister. He was taken aback by what happened.

DRUMHELLER: The group that was dealing with preparations for the Iraq war came back and said they?re no longer interested. And we said, "Well, what about the intel?" And they said, "Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change."

BRADLEY: And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that you had this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilled with that.

DRUMHELLER: The first we heard, they were. Yes.

BRADLEY: But when they learned what it was that he had to say, that Saddam did not have the capability to wage nuclear war, weapons of mass destruction?

DRUMHELLER: They stopped being interested in the intelligence.

BRADLEY: The White House declined to respond to Drumheller's account of Naji Sabri's role, but Secretary of State Rice has said that Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister-turned-U.S. spy, was just one source, and therefore his information wasn't reliable.

DRUMHELLER: They certainly took information that came from single sources on uranium, on the yellowcake story and on several other stories that had no corroboration at all, and so you can?t say you only listen to one source, because on many issues they only listened to one source.

BRADLEY: So you're saying that if there was a single source and that information from that source backed up the case they were trying to build, then that single source was okay, but if it didn't, then the single source was not okay because he couldn't be corroborated.

DRUMHELLER: Unfortunately, that's what it looks like. [Emphasis mine]

There's nothing new in the revelation that Dubya's administration was ignoring intelligence that contradicted its public insistence that the Saddam Hussein government had WMDs. What has been missing before now was hard evidence that Dubya had been told that there no WMDs — evidence that Drumheller provides.

This story is front-page news on papers around the world. Why isn't it on front pages in the US?

CBS News' article on the Drumheller interview is here. You can watch the 60 Minutes story if you go here.

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

Are you now or have you ever been ...?

... a Democrat?

Dubya's administration has deservedly taken a ton of flak for cherry-picking intelligence when deciding to go to war in Iraq. If the intelligence didn't match what the administration had already decided was true, it was ignored.

Now, however, it appears that the White House is taking things to a new level. Check out this paragraph that the Washington Post buried at the bottom of a story about the firing of the CIA office who leaked info about the CIA's secret prisons:

The White House also has recently barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers, according to intelligence officials.

That's right: Dubya's administration is going after intelligence officers on the basis of whether they voted for the prez. In other words, they're not going to wait for someone to blow the whistle on the administration's illegal activities — they're going to try to get rid of anyone whose politics make them 'unreliable.'

I'd make comparisons to how the Soviet Union used to handle this kind of stuff, but you'd only think I was being shrill.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:43 AM | Get permalink

I don't want to be rude.

But maybe, perhaps the current occupant of the White House might have done something wrong. Possibly. But please don't quote me on that, okay?

Impeachment is just so ... rude

[Cartoon: © 2006 Ted Rall]
If you want to see what else Ted Rall has to say about how the Democrats are dealing with Dubya and impeachment, take a look at the full cartoon over here. And if you want to see more of Rall's stuff, check out his website.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:26 AM | Get permalink

Sunday, April 23

Rescuing Dubya's sorry ass.

This week's issue of Time reports on how Dubya's new chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, has a five-pont plan for fixing the prez's sagging political fortunes.

1. Deploy Guns and Badges.

This is an unabashed play to members of the conservative base who are worried about illegal immigration. Under the banner of homeland security, the White House plans to seek more funding for an extremely visible enforcement crackdown at the Mexican border, including a beefed-up force of agents patrolling on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs).... [Says a proponent of the plan:] "Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an atv...."

2. Make Wall Street Happy.

In an effort to curry favor with dispirited Bush backers in the investment world, the Administration will focus on two tax measures already in the legislative pipeline?extensions of the rate cuts for stock dividends and capital gains....

3. Brag More.

White House officials ... are planning a more focused and consistent effort to talk about the program's successes after months of press reports on start-up difficulties. Bolten's plan also calls for more happy talk about the economy. With gas prices a heavy drain on Bush's popularity, his aides want to trumpet the lofty stock market and stable inflation and interest rates. They also plan to highlight any glimmer of success in Iraq ... in an effort to balance the negative impression voters get from continued signs of an incubating civil war.

4. Reclaim Security Credibility.

This is the riskiest, and potentially most consequential, element of the plan, keyed to the vow by Iran to continue its nuclear program despite the opposition of several major world powers. Presidential advisers believe that by putting pressure on Iran, Bush may be able to rehabilitate himself on national security, a core strength that has been compromised by a discouraging outlook in Iraq....

5. Court The Press.

Bolten is extremely guarded around reporters, but he knows them and, unlike some of his colleagues, is not scared of them. Administration officials said he believes the White House can work more astutely with journalists to make its case to the public, and he recognizes that the President has paid a price for the inclination of some on his staff to treat them dismissively or high-handedly. His first move, working with counselor Dan Bartlett, was to offer the press secretary job to Tony Snow of Fox News...

After reading these points, it looks to this mapgie that Bolten's plan is just to do more of the same stuff that Dubya's administration has already been doing. Boding even worse for the plan's success is the really questionable reasoning that seems to undergird it: For example, having Dubya brag more about his accomplishments is based on the belief that the prez's stump tour to promote his Medicare drug plan was really successful — exactly the opposite of how most observers outside the White House rated it. And, as Time points out, most of the US public already doesn't trust Dubya to make the right decisions regarding Iran. That certainly makes me wonder why Bolten thinks that scaring voters with the Iran boogeyman will work any better than, say, scaring voters with the Iraq boogeyman has already been working.

If I were a Democratic strategist, I think I'd be feeling like Bolten was handing me the November elections on a platter.

| | Posted by Magpie at 11:42 AM | Get permalink

Positive images. Not.

As a lesbian who didn't come out until her mid-30s, I have no doubt I would have accepted my own sexuality earlier and with far less pain if I'd had positive images of lesbian women when I was in my teens and early 20s. Given that, I ought to be happy that a company called DykeDolls is marketing lesbian-identified action figures. I mean, 'Redefining culture, one girl at a time' is a pretty good idea, right?

No comment

'Kelly, Christine, and little Soo Jin.' Notice which face we aren't shown.
[Image: DykeDolls]

Well, maybe I would if I thought that lesbians are almost all white. And that the ones who aren't either play basketball or are cute Asian children who need to be saved by white lesbian couples.

blac(k)ademic has a whole lot more.

And while you're there, check out her post on Blogging Against Heteronormativity Day. It's chock-full of links to posts that challenge the notion that 'female' and 'male' are rigid categories, and that point out the ways that these categories are used to circumscribe our daily lives. Make sure to catch the late links that are posted in the comments.

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