If the day ends in "y"

...it is a safe bet that somewhere John Bolton is, either in print or in person, trying to convince anyone who will listen that Iran must be bombed.  It's the same song the sick bastard has been singing for years, and apparently Bomb, bomb, bomb...bomb, bomb Iran" is the only tune he knows.

He is singing it today on the op-ed page of the  Washington Post.

He was singing it last week on the pages of the LA Times.  

On the day the Iranians went to the polls, his act was booked by the Wall Street Journal.

He was singing it on New Years Eve.  He rang in the new year with it.  Before that, it was the only song on his iPod all summer long.  Two years ago he was threatening U.S. action when diplomacy was threatening to rear it's ugly head, and four years ago he had the date picked out to drop the first bomb.  

Are you seeing the pattern yet?  

What the fuck is this discredited disgrace doing on every editorial page in the country?  In light of today's fiasco at the Washington Post , involving the dickwhisperers at the WaPo trying to sell access to their reporters and political figures - I have to wonder if there is a neocon payday for the editors who publish the bullshit warmongering that idiots like Bolton and the rest of the fatassed chickenhawk mental cases at the AEI espouse?  In light of what we learned today - I think that is a fair question.  


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Kurtz: Objectivity Impossible for Black Women

Shorter Howard Kurtz: Well, ok, so none of the African American women who are reporters on the Michelle Obama beat have gotten interviews with her since the inauguration. And ok, so "no one raises questions when an Irish American male reporter covers a pol named Murphy." But all these African American women are still probably going too easy on Michelle Obama. Because she's black! And they're black! And she's a woman! And they're women!

As Adam Serwer says:

More importantly, you would never ever see a media critic like Kurtz questioning the ability of white men to cover other white men objectively, or for that matter the ability of white men to cover women or people of color, despite the fact that if newsroom coverage were to be affected, it would be by the prevailing cultural biases of the better represented population in the newsroom.

But why would Kurtz question white men? After all, he's a white man, and he's never had the appearance of being sympathetic to a white male candidate. Cold, clear-eyed assessment, that's him:

After McCain held a media barbecue at his cabin near Sedona, Columbia Journalism Review seems to have developed indigestion, especially since it was on the record but political questions were discouraged:

"Such ground rules must go down easier with a tour of the grounds and a plateful of McCain-made ribs. (While, apparently, 'objectivity prohibits a good reporter' like Reuters' Jeff Mason from telling readers how tasty McCain's ribs were, CBS's Dante Higgins 'is confident in reporting they were succulent and flavorful').

"In return for dropping 'political talk,' reporters got their candidate-cooked meal. And a tire swing. And Frank Sinatra tunes on the deck.

"And McCain, in return, got press coverage depicting a relaxed, confident, regular-like-you-and-me-but-also-very-much-in-charge guy holding court at what could well be, as so many reporters noted, the future Western White House. (Could rib-grilling be the new brush-clearing? Just as manly -- and sticks to reporters' ribs!)"

There might be a morsel of a complaint here if journalists didn't get much chance to ask McCain serious questions. But he's the most accessible presidential candidate in modern history. Hillary had one dinner with her press corps, but it was off the record. And my sources say she didn't cook.

In fact, Kurtz had a lot to say about McCain's accessibility to reporters...like Howard Kurtz.

In conclusion: It's unreasonable to suggest impropriety when John McCain has reporters over to his house and cooks for them. It is reasonable, however, to wonder if the beat reporters who slog along behind Michelle Obama waiting outside the closed doors of her events are favoring her because of shared race and gender.

That, my friends (McCain shout-out!), is Village logic.

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You’ll Always Have Buenos Aries

If only South Carolina’s Latin Lothario had taken an extra day writing bad poetry to his Latin lovebird, he might’ve been saved from the nail guns affixing his hide to the wall. Another 24 hours and the All Jacko, All the Time networks would’ve barely noticed he’d returned to speculation that he’d flown the coup for on the Appalachian Trail.

Another governor caught with his hypocritical donger outside his pants? That’s not news. Now a donger with freakishly bad plastic surgery, a drug habit, and test tube babies dangling out of windows? That’s news baby! The kind that would’ve allowed Mark Sanford to sneak in under the news radar if only he’d returned a day late.

Unfortunately, he had the bad luck of returning from Tangoland straight into the arms of reporters pestering him with questions about where the hell he’d gone walkabout for the past week. True to form, Sanford’s initial story - as crazy and entertainingly refreshing as it might’ve been - was only the first act in a protracted drip drop of misinformation and criticism.

First, many politicians and assorted guardians of the public morals took time out from schtupping their maids to condemn the poor love-struck bastard as a hypocrite who must resign to save the Republic.

He refused, and rightfully so.

He needn’t explain his behavior to the likes of Larry Craig nor David Vitter nor, omigod, Lindsey Graham. It’s a personal matter between him and a wife who’d already kicked his lying ass to the curb. If a person wants to conduct a pouting bi-hemispherical schoolboy love affair, who are we to condemn him?

But shortly after his rambling and impassioned mea culpa the usual messy baggage started to ooze out of his cover story.

It seems the affair wasn’t just that one time. And, maybe he had (or hadn’t) billed the state for his travel. Ducking his security force was a no-brainer as was his “liberation” of a state vehicle to get to the Atlanta airport. And perhaps that whole leaving the state without telling the Lt. Governor thing was, ahem, bad form.

He’s steadily resisted resignation, which is a sure bet to give the story Betty Grable legs. In the latest twist, armchair psychiatrists are Bill Fristing diagnoses of his mental health. A possible hormonal imbalance. Maybe obsessive compulsive disorder. Hell, the guy might even be a full-scale manic depressive, schizophrenic sociopath with anorexic tendencies!

Or maybe just as stupid as your average tree stump.

Mark as much as I hate to say this, being a hypocrite and having your onto the Governor’s Mansion lawn is the least of your worries. Now that people are actually paying attention, you’ll inevitably find yourself on the wrong side of an investigation that will provide a reason to rightly or wrongly oust you.

But there are real reasons to step aside. You showed incredibly bad judgment by leaving the USS South Carolina without a rudder and your world famous tete-a-tete is distracting your state in a time of trouble. Give the citizens a break, Lindsey Graham already serves them poorly enough without you adding palmetto wood to the fire.

In my mind, the affair actually made you - a man renowned for his standoffishness - more human. You were like a boy in love with your syrupy poetry and sexy hijinks.

But you did some insanely stupid things. And for those things - the things that actually affect the public - you’ve got to go. Besides, sitting in a love nest with your new lady friend has got to be miles better than arguing about tobacco tax policy with a legislator that still flies a confederate flag on his lawn.

Go on. Step aside and get on with your life. Let your wife and kids get on with thiers. Leave all the caterwauling behind.

But remember, you’ll always have Buenos Aries.

Related articles

• Why Mark Sanford’s Political Career NEEDS To Be Over (dailykos.com)
• Ron Christie Slams Mark Sanford: “Disgrace” Who Should Resign (VIDEO) (huffingtonpost.com)
• Did Sanford’s affair break the law? (msnbc.msn.com)
• Sanford admits he ‘crossed the lines’ with other women (cbc.ca)
• Sanford Twitter Account Active Even As He’s Disappeared (huffingtonpost.com)
• Gov. Sanford Tries to Recover Amid Ouster Calls (abcnews.go.com)

mark sanford politics argentina morality michael jackson

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Color revolutions and political branding: A guide
for the perplexed

The 'Green Revolution' in Iran has its paradoxes-- not least among them the anomaly of seeing young people out on the streets of Tehran in outfits that seemed openly defiant of Islamic dress norms while they also sported a color that many Muslims consider represents their religion.

The choice of that color, and of the accompanying rallying cry of "Allahu-akbar", seemed like deliberate attempts to build alliances between the often pro-secular west-o-philes of North Tehran and important reformist branches of the country's ruling hierarchy. (The lack of any real agreement between these two portions of the movement over whether the goal is to reform the country's Islamic system or to overthrow it is probably one of the movement's most notable weaknesses.)

But the use of the 'green' branding did seem like a bit of a master-move, regardless how things turn out. For me, it evoked first and foremost the great marching song of the old Sinn Fein/IRA struggle for Irish independence: "Oh, we're all off to Dublin in the green, in the green... "

In the Irish context, of course, "Orange" is also an extremely potent marker. Note that when the successfully independent Irish Republicans designed their national flag, it cleverly incorporated the orange along with the green-- in much the same way that the flag of democratic South Africa cleverly incorporates all the main colors and themes of that country's previously warring parties.

Here in the US, I think one of the most moving civil war memorials of all is the court-house at Appomattox, the spot where Robert E. Lee submitted the surrender of the Army of Virginia. Now preserved as a historical site, the courthouse has a thought-provoking wall of photos of the war dead: the ones matted with Confederate grey are checkerboarded somberly across the whole wall with those matted with Yankee blue. There's a lot to be said, I think, for undertaking a good mash-up of everyone's formerly partisan symbols at the end of a civil war.

In Palestinian politics, green is the color used by Hamas, while Fateh uses yellow (on the right here.) Orange is the color used by Moustapha Barghouthi's still-small Mubadara party.

Shift focus to Lebanon, and confusingly there it's Hizbullah, which is broadly allied to Hamas, that uses yellow, while the somewhat-in-competition Amal movement uses green.

The Grand-daddy of the present wave of pro-west "color revolutions" is the "Orange Revolution" of 2004-05 in Ukraine.

Oh, by the way, that last image comes from the website of the Green movement in the European parliament. Numerous countries have Green Parties these days, of course, with their "green" signifying their environmentalist concern. Can't forget them...

Okay, moving along from 2005 we then had the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia. I can't find any satisafactory images from that, such as would quickly clarify for me whether the "rose" actually refers to a color or a flower.

But while we're in that part of the color spectrum we cannot forget the feisty US women of Code Pink.

And then there is Thailand, which earlier this year had back-to-back "red" and "yellow" movements trying to take over the capital. That development prompted the Asia Society's Jamie Metzel to call for the creation of a new movement to bring the two sides together. Okay, what he really called for was an especially Thai form of an "orange" revolution: mashing up the symbols, again.

On a longer time-scale, the most lasting of all color brandings of political movements in modern times has almost certainly been the association of red with socialism and/or communism. That association has held true in almost every country except the US (and perhaps Thailand?)

In the US, for some unknown reason, political analysts started some time ago talking about "red states" and "blue states"-- with red signifying the Republican Party, and blue the Democrats. Maybe this is related to the exceptionalism American culture displays on other matters related to socialist movements, like the US's choice of what seems like a fairly random day in early September to celebrate "Labor Day", when every other country I know of that honors its working people does so on May 1st.

One final note about political branding. I still think one of the most powerful symbols anyone anywhere has ever developed is the peace symbol. It was designed in 1958 by the anti-war British designer Gerald Holtom, who said it was based on the semaphore symbols for "ND"-- nuclear disarmament.

He also wrote this about the development of the design:

"I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it."

Fifty-one years later, and we still have a lot of reason to be in despair about the number of nuclear weapons in the world... But Holtom's symbol is still a powerful and immediately recognizable mobilization tool for peace activists.

In the comments here, it would interesting to learn of other uses of color branding by non-governmental political movements around the world. I am sure I have missed some above!



Sponsored Topics: Iran - Tehran - US - Green Revolution - Politics

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Destroying the Planet, Part II

Over the weekend, we provided a graphic illustration of how much of the planet you could eliminate for a "budget" of 5 percent of global GDP. But what if, instead of having 5 percent to work with, you instead had 23.4 percent, or about 14.3 trillion dollars, which was the United States' share of world GDP in 2008 as according to the International Monetary Fund?

It turns out that you could wipe out 5.3 billion people for this amount: all of Africa except Libya, all of South America except Venezuela, Mexico and the Rest of Central America, China, Southeast Asia (except Taiwan and Hong Kong), the Indian Subcontinent, all of Central Asia, most of Eastern Europe, and quite a few tiny Pacific Islands.



Note that a few countries, like Cuba and Somalia, survive here merely because the IMF does not publish data on them, but they're generally impoverished and it probably would not be too much trouble to rid yourself of those ones too.

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Media Outlet Refuses To Run Republican TV Ad
Filled With Misrepresentations Of Clean Energy Bill

This afternoon, Roanoke television station WDBJ-TV, announced they will be refusing to air a National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) ad attacking freshman Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA), citing factual inaccuracies. The NRCC had been planning to run television ads against Democratic members of Congress, like Perriello, who voted for the Waxman-Markey clean energy economy legislation that passed last week. After receiving information about the factual inaccuracies in the ad, the station pulled it from rotation.

For any objective observer, the the ad is pulled out of thin air. The ads erroneously state that the bill will “destroy jobs” and “cost middle-class families $1,800 a year.” According to a study by the Center for American Progress, clean energy economy legislation will create 1.7 million American jobs while simultaneously addressing climate change by capping carbon dioxide emissions. The $1,800 figure used by NRCC is also made of whole cloth. The Congressional Budget Office has scored the bill and found that by 2020, the annual cost would be about $175 per household — about a postage stamp a day. An EPA estimate of the bill found similar results, projecting the cost to be about $80 to $111 per a year.

Still refusing to accept reality, the Republican leadership is instructing its members to lie about the clean energy economy bill:

– Last week, Republican whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) posted a message erroneously claiming that clean energy legislation will amount to “a national energy tax of up to $3,100 on all Americans.”

– Republican leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) posted on his website that the clean energy bill will cost “$3,100 a year,” then modified that number to “$3,000 per household per year.”

– Republican conference chair Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), not to be outdone, claimed the clean energy bill would be “over $4,000 a year.”

All the numbers cited by Republicans are at least seventeen times the highest possible projection by the CBO and EPA.

Clearly, Republicans opposed to the clean energy bill seem willing to justify their opposition using outright falsehoods. But fortunately, at least some stations are not willing to propagate it.

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WaPo Publishes Docs On AmeriCorps IG Firing

Yesterday we told you about new documents which shed more light on the White House's decision to fire AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin.

And now, the Washington Post has published the complete set of documents, which were recently turned over by the Corporation for National and Community Service to a Senate committee reviewing the firing.

There are 33 separate documents, meaning there's a lot in there. So if you're up for it, take a look at them and let us know -- via comments or email -- what jumps out, in terms of information that further explains how and why Walpin appeared to lose the confidence of CNCS, and whether the White House acted reasonably in firing him.

Conservatives have charged that Walpin was fired because he aggressively investigated an Obama ally. But a slew of evidence has since emerged to suggest that the initiative for the firing came from CNCS itself, and that the decision was more than reasonable. At first glance, these documents appear to support that take, but let us know more...

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The lobby now admits it is a 'sliver,'
unrepresentative of majority of American Jews

Months ago I declared that Gaza had cracked the Israel lobby. It did so by causing non-affiliated Jews to at last speak out about Israel/Palestine policy. These Jews had traditionally ceded the foreign-policy turf to their pro-Israel cousins (as I did, deferring politely to Marty Peretz out of the stupid guilty feeling that he was a better Jew than I was) till they realized that their cousins were nuts.

The Israel lobby is slowly waking up to the new landscape, and blaming anyone but the real culprit: a state practicing Jim Crow with millions of Palestinians under occupation and promoting a policy of permanent war with its neighbors.

The latest evidence of the lobby's puzzlement is a highly-tendentious piece by Gary Rosenblatt in the Jewish Week about "Whispered Worries About Obama" that--while poohpoohing the settlements and feeding suspicion about Obama-- states that the body of American Jewry is with Obama, even if the "mainstream supporters of Israel and Jewish causes" (i.e. Jewish chauvinists) are against him.

Leaders of American Jewish organizations note an unease among mainstream supporters of Israel and Jewish causes... who say they voted for and admire Barack Obama and support many of his policies, but feel he is being overly critical of Israel and too soft on the Palestinians and on an Iranian regime bent on developing nuclear weapons that could end up aimed at the Jewish state...

An interview with Malcolm Hoenlein follows. The third paragraph, which I've emphasized, is the plum in the pudding:

he told me the other day that "judging from phone calls" he has received, and other responses, "there is an increasing unease" about a number of the Obama administration's recent statements and actions.

Those include... the public pressure on Israel to halt settlements -- as if they represented the key to peace rather than the Palestinians' consistent refusal to recognize a Jewish state in the region -- and the lack of specific demands on the Palestinians; and the concern that the president is still determined to engage in dialogue with Iran, despite the regime's brutal behavior following national elections last month.

..[I]s the gap growing between leaders of mainstream Jewish organizations and the majority of American Jews, more than three-quarters of whom voted for Obama, support a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis and may well agree that settlements are a hindrance to peace?

More evidence of the same trend. Here's Jennifer Rubin fulminating at Commentary, and calling on the "sliver" of American Jewry that agrees with her:

Where is the outrage in the U.S. -- especially among the 78% of Jews who voted for Obama? Where are the major Jewish institutions that in the past offered rhetorical and political support for a vibrant pro-Israel policy? Yes, Marty Peretz is pretty peeved these days, but an irate column or two from a previously enthusiastic Obama defender are less than what one would expect when Washington decides to launch this sort of policy. One wonders what those offering themselves as official representatives of the American Jewish community and friends of Israel think they are accomplishing by their relative silence.

The sliver of American Jewry originally wary of Obama who had warned of just this result is outraged, but not surprised.

**
Read more at Mondoweiss.

Sponsored Topics: Gaza - Israel - Barack Obama - American Jews - Middle East

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Who wants to try this

Gulp. I'm sure it's incredibly safe but yikes, I really can't stand heights. Give me rough seas, bike riding in Paris, eating insects or dodging motorcycles on the streets of Vietnam over this any day.

Visitors to the Sears Tower's new glass balconies all seem to agree: The first step is the hardest.

The balconies are suspended 1,353 feet in the air and jut out four feet from the building's 103rd floor Skydeck. Their transparent walls, floor and ceiling leave visitors with the impression they're floating over the city.

"It's like walking on ice," said Margaret Kemp, of Bishop, Calif., who said her heart was still pounding even after stepping away from the balcony. "That first step you take ? 'am I going down?'"

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Deep Thought

How big does your house have to be before it's a compound?[...]

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