State Of The Union

Just watched the Presidents SOTU. No average American could know enough about his domestic proposals to give an informed opinion at this point. Being a person who likes to have all sides before I make a decision on where I stand I'll just say for now that many things he said are worth discussion. When it comes to terrorism and the occupation of Iraq it was (should have known) same ol same ol. We have nothing but fear its self. By far the weakest most misleading part of his speech.Just a little prediction. If you read the rightie blogs or listen to the screechers on talk radio I would be willing to bet the farm that the vast amount of their time concerning all this will be to smear and slam Pelosi and other Dems and not discuss what the President actually said. They are so predictiable and lame it is disgusting.

Ya Jim Webb! Thanks for mentioning TR and todays comparisons

News Notes

Those being protected by lies about global warming ask the administration to quit lying and do something already. They also say it will help and not hurt the economy.

Chief executives from such major corporations as General Electric and DuPont teamed up with environmental organizations Monday, urging U.S. lawmakers Monday to pass sweeping legislation that would ultimately cut greenhouse gas emissions...... USCAP's proposal, entitled "A Call For Action", asks Congress to take a mandatory, "market-driven approach" to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Part of that plan would include a "cap-and-trade program," which has taken hold in Europe.
Under the program, a company is given a set number of emission credits, but would have the freedom to sell, or trade, those remaining credits to other firms that might have spent their own emission credits.
USCAP members said that using this market-based approach would not only drive new, greener technology, but it could also be a significant source of growth of economic and job growth for the U.S.

When will the wingnuts finally admit that what we are doing has an impact on the planet? How hard is that to comprehend? How brainwashed do you have to be to to so completely shut off any modicum of common sense?
I have often asked the wingnut what harm it would do to err on the side of caution even if it isn't true. I don't remember any reasonable response. Why do they have such a hard on over this? More here.

I know the radical right doesn't think good will with the rest of the world is important...but again for those with common sense and the ability to think ahead:
Despite two years of a concentrated effort by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her public diplomacy major- doma Karen Hughes to boost Washington's global image, more people around the world have an unfavourable opinion of U.S. policies than at any time in recent memory ...he survey, which polled more than 26,000 people in 25 countries, including the U.S., between November and January, found that a 49 percent plurality overall believes the U.S. is playing a "mainly negative" role in the world today, compared to less than a third (32 percent) who said Washington's influence was "mainly positive."
And in the 18 countries where respondents were asked the same question in each of the past two years, the latest poll found a substantial drop in the percentage who said they viewed U.S. influence as positive, from 40 percent in 2005, to 36 percent last year, to 29 percent in 2007.
"According to world public opinion, these days the U.S. government hardly seems to be able to do anything right," said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) which, along with Canada-based Globescan, conducted the survey. ....The findings of the BBC poll echo those of another major survey of 14 foreign countries released last June by the Pew Research Centre's Global Attitudes Project. It found that Washington's global image had slipped over the previous year, particularly in Europe and Asia..
The right has proven themselves completely incapable of governing and maintaining the greatness of our country in the world. They had their chance and they blew it. Time for a change. Time to support people who will move us forward and work to restore the greatness that is America, not destroy it.

Exposing todays right wing lie:

JAKARTA, Indonesia (CNN) -- Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a "madrassa" are not accurate, according to CNN reporting.
Insight Magazine, which is owned by the same company as The Washington Times, reported on its Web site last week that associates of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-New York, had unearthed information the Illinois Democrat and likely presidential candidate attended a Muslim religious school known for teaching the most fundamentalist form of Islam.
Obama lived in Indonesia as a child, from 1967 to 1971, with his mother and stepfather and has acknowledged attending a Muslim school, but an aide said it was not a madrassa.
A spokesman for Clinton, who is also weighing a White House bid, denied that the campaign was the source of the Obama claim. He called the story "an obvious right-wing hit job."........CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.
He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971. "This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."
Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes. "I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that." Vause also interviewed one of Obama's Basuki classmates, Bandug Winadijanto, who claims that not a lot has changed at the school since the two men were pupils.It's not (an) Islamic school. It's general," Winadijanto said. "There is a lot of Christians, Buddhists, also Confucian. ... So that's a mixed school." The Obama aide described Fox News' broadcasting of the Insight story "appallingly irresponsible."

Fox news irresponsible? There is little doubt. The problem is the right will not cover the follow up so many will continue to believe. Either that or they will use twisted logic(see global warming) to deny the truth. It is their typical pattern of lies,hate and deceit.

However if you want to find an authentic madrassa:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan The Taliban's governing body decided to open schools in the areas controlled by the militants in Afghanistan, the purported chief spokesman for the hardline militia told The Associated Press. Abdul Hai Muthmahien said that Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders decided that from March, Islamic education will be provided in at least six southern provinces — first for boys and later for girls.The Taliban last year carried out about 200 arson attacks on state schools and killed some 20 teachers, as its insurgency has gathered strength. That's been a setback to a massive foreign-backed education campaign over the past five years to get Afghan children back to school — regarded as one of the successes in efforts to rebuild the war-battered country.

This from the people that harbored the people and planners that attacked us on 9/11. The forgotten war. Another example of why we are totally missing the boat in the “war on terror”. Our leaders are losers.

Odds and Ends

New Mexicos governor Bill Richardson has joined the Presidential hunt.
Richardson strikes me as a pol and a Washington insider through and through. He also has quite reasonable ideas and a logical view on the world. His skill as a diplomat could prove to be invaluable in the times we live in. I have others that I would prefer for President. I however see him as the first choice by far as VP. Nobody even comes close. For a number of reasons he would be a great asset to any of the potential Presidential candidates both electorally and in governance. What do you think?

Hillary also takes the plunge.

Not a chance. Ya, I know all the polls and pundits call her the front runner. How surprised will they be when they find her an also ran. Quite to the disappointment to the radical right whos mouths are watering for a piece her flesh. This is nearly the universal opinion of almost everyone I know and everything from the activists that I read. This being the point. It is the activists that go to the caucuses. It is the activists who vote in the primaries. This is why the corporate media and polls will be far off the mark. The age of triangulation and compromise is over and the radical right will rue the day that there scorched earth policy brought on the rebellion.

More of the goofy crap they try to pass off on those to stupid, incurious, easily frightened or too brainwashed to know the difference.

But if you are going to start a war, the best use of resources is disinformation, of course. Enter this piece of crap from UPI:

Report: Iran massing troops at Iraq border

"IRBIL, Iran, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- Iranian troops are reportedly gathering along the border with northern Iraq. An Iraqi Kurdish source told the Kuwait News Agency, KUNA, that Iran is massing troops stationed at its main border crossing with Iraq, in Pashmakh.

The source also said Iran is beefing up its troops at the Kirban border position with Iraq, KUNA reported.

Iranian border authorities are also stepping up inspections at the border, KUNA said."

Why would one need an anonymous source when a build-up of troops could be seen from satellite images, for example? Are these people simply lazy, stupid, or just corrupt? Why would anyone run a piece like this , given the very heated and dangerous stand-off we are now in and do it based on a single source, who also happens to be part of the GCC states/ally of the US? If this were true, then the US would have the same information, would it not? And if the US had the same information, then would it not be leaking left and right given the amount of political gaming going on around Iran/Iraq? Furthermore, how does "stepping up inspections at the border" translate into "massing troops at Iraq border"? This is a prime example of what I call intelligence laundry: place a piece of propaganda with a foreign news service and have it come back into US media or media that US news agencies will pick up, and there you have it, news from foreign reporters, no longer propaganda.

The idiocy of tolerating greed masquerading as proper Capitalism.

The gap between the very rich and the rest of American society has become a chasm so mighty under the Bush Regime that it is nearly impossible to see from one side to the other. The disparity of incomes between the boss and his employees are bigger than ever-- much bigger. And it's worse in the U.S. than in any other developed country. In Japan a boss makes 11 times what his employees make. In Germany it's 12 times and in France it's 15 times, more. That grows to 20 times more in Italy and Canada and 22 times more in the U.K. Under George Bush, the disparity has risen to 475 times more! In other words, if a worker in Canada makes $40,000 a year, his boss makes $800,000. Not bad. In the U.S., the boss of that worker would make $19,000,000. This isn't a coincidence. It is the result of Bush Republican policies and initiatives. Raising the minimum wage a little might help but until the Democrats tackle Bush's policies of relentless class warfare head on, the disintegration of the American middle class and the brutalization of the American working class will continue. .....Today for example, one of the most corrupt and ethic less Republicans in the entire government, Minority Leader Boehner (best known for handing out bribes from Big Tobacco to Republican legislators on the floor of the House during a vote) has demanded that the House adjourn rather than pass the last of Speaker Pelosi's 100 Hour Agenda. Why now? Why are Boehner, Blunt and Howdy Doody having a fit over the last item when they impotently stood by and watched the first 4 items not just pass but pass with signficant support-- as many as 124 votes on one!!-- from Republicans? Well, the last item is about cutting off billions of dollars in subsidies to Big Oil and putting that money towards investment in renewable energy. That's a big deal for Boehner and for his cabal of uber-corrupt Republicrooks.

As the first commenter on this linked story says: You know, all this proves is that these people are fucking lunatics who need to be placed in rubber rooms.

And Glenn sees through them almost every time.

Orrin Hatch spent the first two minutes of his time "questioning" Gonzales by lauding Gonzales' extreme integrity and diligence during this Grave and Epic War on Terrorism that America faces, explaining that everything they've done is critical to protecting us ....Hatch then spent the rest of his time (all 6 minutes) demanding that Gonzales and the Justice Department devote much more of its resources and attention -- including FBI agents, other law-enforcement resources and a new task force -- to enforcing anti-obscenity laws against people in the U.S. who produce pornography, ....Or, to put it another way, the Terrorists pose such a grave danger to our Republic that it is the most threatening and important time Ever, justifying whole new expansions of government power and total government secrecy in order to protect us and to win this War because the Terrorists want to kill us all, and our law enforcement resources should therefore be poured into imprisoning people who make adult films and putting an end to pornography. That's what Orrin Hatch said today. .........Feingold began by pointing out that the administration, including Gonzales, has many times accused opponents of the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" -- meaning those who insisted that eavesdropping take place within the law, within the FISA framework -- of "opposing eavesdropping on terrorists" (I can find 20 examples in 5 minutes of that).

Feingold's first question - "do you know of any one in the country who opposed eavesdropping on terrorists?"

Gonzales: Sure - if you look at blogs today, there is a lot of concern about all types of eavesdropping, who don't want us eavesdropping at all.

Feingold: Do you know anyone in government who ever took that position?

Gonzales: No, but that is not what I said.

Feingold: It is a disgrace and disservice to your office and the President to have accused people on this Committee of opposing eavesdropping on terrorists.

Gonzales: I didn't have you in mind or anyone on the Committee when I referred to people who oppose eavesdropping on terrorists. Perish the thought.

Feingold: Oh, well it's nice that you didn't have us "in your mind" when making those accusations, but given that you and the President were running around the country accusing people of opposing eavesdropping on terrorists in the middle of an election, the fact that you didn't have Congressional Democrats in "mind" isn't significant. Your intent was to make people think that anyone who opposed the "TSP" did not want to eavesdrop on terrorists, even though that was false. No Democrats oppose eavesdropping on terrorists.

Gonzales: I wasn't referring to Democrats.

So, apparently, all those speeches Bush officials and their supporters have spent the last year giving accusing people of opposing eavesdropping on terrorists, and all the television commericals making the same accusations throughout the months leading up to the election, were not about Democrats at all, but were about random bloggers who are against all eavesdropping. Where? Maybe on Smirking Chimp and Democratic Underground. That is who they meant when they were talking about opposing eavesdropping on Osama bin Laden. They didn't mean Democrats in Congress. The entire campaign and all of those accusations were directed only to the bloggers who don't want them eavesdropping at all.

I confess to finding that exchange deeply revolting though satisfying at the same time. Can't they just all yield all of their time to Feingold?

Finally, a tribute to those on the wingnut welfare.

You know how the wingnuts obliterate moral logic by saying we have double-standards because we won’t tolerate their intolerance?

You know how when wingnuts do or say something absolutely execrable, they insist that our turning the other fist (instead of turning the other cheek, as they hope, because their idea of a fair fight is with a punching bag) to such depravity is ‘just as bad’?

Yeah? How fucking stupid is that, huh? So much whining of bullies, right?

Yeah.,.....(continued)

That is far from covering it all but catches us up on some of what is happening. I must admit I find it harder to do this. First maybe because I am not doing the talk show everyday and have a new set of priorities and secondly because the same ole same ole from the radical right has become so wildly inane and insipid as to hardly merit comment or the time it takes to respond. I will keep working for the inspiration and give it the good ole all American try though.