September 6, 2008 archive

Obama Campaigning On McCain’s Terms

On August 8, 2008 Georgia under President Mikhail Saakashvili at the instigation of the Bush administration and PNAC neocons launched a major military offensive to retake the breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Russia responded by sending tanks and troops into the area and rapidly broke Georgia’s offensive, forcing Georgian forces to retreat and abandon their aggresssion against the two provinces, and in the process announced to the world that the geopolitical balance of power had shifted and had been shifting for some time while Bush has had the US bogged down in quicksand in Iraq.

South Ossetia and Abkhazia have both moved to request UN and international recognition of their independence from Georgia, and South Ossetians have announced their intention to reunite with North Ossetia under the Russian Federation.

The McCain campaign, the Bush Administration, and US media have turned the situation and reality on it’s head with continual rhetoric condemning Russia for “aggression” and attempts to encircle Russia with a “missile defense shield”, when it was in reality Georgia supported by Washington and the neocons that had committed the aggression.

Obama has picked up on the McCain narrative and has also condemned Russia calling them the “aggressor”, and is now fighting the election on McCain’s terms trying to show that he is as “tough” or tougher than McCain on “national security”.

Andrei P. Tsygankov, Professor of Political Science and International Relations at San Francisco State University explains in this Real News video, and thinks that Obama will lose the election to McCain unless he rapidly differentiates himself from McCain over “national security” in the last few weeks of the campaign.

Docudharma Times Saturday September 6



That School Looks Familiar And

Using Music Without Permission

Laws Only Apply To The Little People

Just Ask Republicans




Saturday’s Headlines:

School goes from backdrop to center stage

Keeper of the Kajaki dam sees dream come closer to reality

From jail to high office: the strange journey of Asif Ali Zardari

US warship confronts Russian military in ‘tinderbox’ port

Medvedev says Russia ‘nation to be reckoned with’

Israel nudges Egypt to crack down harder on Gaza smugglers

Iran rejects French warning of Israeli strike risk

In Destitute Swaziland, Leader Lives Royally

Thousands stranded as floods cut off aid in Haiti

U.S. Rescue Seen at Hand for 2 Mortgage Giants  



By STEPHEN LABATON and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Published: September 5, 2008  


WASHINGTON – Senior officials from the Bush administration and the Federal Reserve on Friday called in top executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance giants, and told them that the government was preparing to place the two companies under federal control, officials and company executives briefed on the discussions said.

The plan, which would place the companies into a conservatorship, was outlined in separate meetings with the chief executives at the office of the companies’ new regulator. The executives were told that, under the plan, they and their boards would be replaced and shareholders would be virtually wiped out, but that the companies would be able to continue functioning with the government generally standing behind their debt, people briefed on the discussions said.

The escalating breakdown of urban society across the US

‘There are two Americas – separate, unequal, and no longer even acknowledging each other except on the barest cultural terms. In the one nation, new millionaires are minted every day.

David Simon

The Guardian,

Saturday September 6 2008


Baltimore – it’s been an ordinary week in Maryland’s largest city. The August heat broke and one can nearly sleep with a window open; the Orioles are again down in the cellar in the American League East; the city murder rate is a bit behind last year’s blood-letting, and if it holds into the fall, politicians and police commanders will compete to claim credit.

The stories in the Baltimore Sun remain fixed on the surface, each of them premised on the givens: schools will open next week and provide more or less the same inferior education as previous years; Johns Hopkins is building its biotech park expansion where the East Baltimore ghetto used to be and the ghetto is migrating due east and north-east; the biotech park will be great for white folk with college degrees, for those with union cards, the factories are still closed and the port is still losing cargo to Norfolk; a shooting here, a cutting there ..

USA

U.S. needs more troops in Afghanistan, commander says

But with Petraeus set to recommend slowing the drawdown in Iraq, more forces are unlikely to be available soon to deal with rising bloodshed.

By Peter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

10:33 PM PDT, September 5, 2008


WASHINGTON — A top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan said Friday that he needed thousands of additional troops to combat violence along the border with Pakistan, a requirement that appears to be at odds with recommendations from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus on future troop levels in Iraq.

Because of strains on the military, plans to boost the number of troops in Afghanistan depend on reducing the force in Iraq. Petraeus’ plan, which President Bush is expected to approve Tuesday in an appearance at the National Defense University, would slow the reduction of combat troops in Iraq, freeing up only one full Army combat brigade for redeployment to Afghanistan. That move would not happen until early next year.

In addition to the combat brigade of about 3,500 to 4,000 troops, U.S. officials also plan to withdraw about 2,000 non-combat support personnel from Iraq and transfer about 1,300 Marines from Iraq’s Anbar province to western Afghanistan.

 

Senator McCain, This is Walter Reed

It’s no wonder the 109th GOP Congress and Administration, in their rush to War with the Drums beating Louder and Louder, didn’t take Military Care and once again the Veterans Care, Wars Makes, into consideration and Pass Legislation and Funding, They Couldn’t Find The Facilities, and still can’t!!

The ANWR Trust Fund

   What are the benefits?  Kotchen and Burger estimated that the oil had a value of $374 billion (writing in July 2007, they assumed a long-term price of $53/barrel), but that it would cost $123 billion to extract and market.  The net return of $254 billion is divided consists of industry rents of $90 billion, Alaska tax revenues of $37 billion, and Federal tax revenues of $124 billion.

Under the authors’ understanding of incidence, consumers wouldn’t benefit much at all because oil prices would not fall noticeably.  Still, drilling makes economic sense if the loss of environmental amenities is valued at less than $1,141 a person (per American, not per Alaskan) and that was with a price of oil roughly half of today’s price.

At today’s price of oil, a rough estimate of the benefit — not counting environmental costs — is over $600 billion.  So the whole issue seems much more important than I had thought just one hour ago.  Some approximation of taxes and transfers and auctions are available, so these gains can be redistributed to some extent if you wish.

That’s economics professor Tyler Cowen at his blog, Marginal Revolution.

The point that Cowen brings up is a profound one.  The common argument against expanding oil drilling both off-shore and in ANWR has been twofold: the amount of oil is not significant enough to alter the world price (which will always be true), and the value of the oil does not significantly outpace the amount of environmental damage that would be caused.

But when the price of oil changes, the value of the oil does as well.  Indeed, if the price of oil continues to rise in the long term, the value of the oil will be significantly more than the value of the environmental damage (to the extent that any value can be placed on that – but, it is easily imaginable that at future oil price X, the profits will be significant enough that huge sums from it could be used to finance environmental cleanup in many places).

Therefore, I predict that at some point, the value of the oil in ANWR will be large enough that it is politically irrational not to exploit it.  The oil in ANWR will become a sort of national trust fund, where at a certain expected value, the government is certain to exploit it.  I see no way of avoiding this, or by which this is not the rational course of action.

Mental Health Parity and the 2008 Campaign

Since no one over at the main Kos site seems to care about anything other than Palin, here’s a cross post…

For those interested in the Native Americans of Southern LA, I’ll post on that tomorrow…however, this is another issue that burns me up, so here’s the rant on this…

It’s a complex issue, but I’ll try to make it short and bittersweet.  Mental health issues are not treated like physical health issues by insurance companies.  Despite the fact that neuroscience has now clearly linked many mental health disorders like depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD, ADHD, etc. to genetic issues or chemical imbalances, these are still considered conditions that do not merit the same level of coverage as physical health issues like cancer.  Why?  Because it would cost more money…the helath insurers generally treat these as they did in the 1970’s, offering limited..if any…coverage.

You can go to the National Institute of Mental Health website for the stats..I won’t bore anyone with them here.    However, they indicate that 13 million Americans have some form of debilitating mental health issue and nearly 60 million have a mental health issue of any form.  As with other forms of health care, minorities and the poor suffer more fro m these issues–often due to a lack of care–than other population groups.

Further, this should not be a Red or Blue issue, as anyone, from any background can develop a disorder.  For example, I have a good friend who developed schizophrenia while in college.  He was from a well-off family, had attended a very good private college prep school and was enrolled in one of the top universities.  He started developing symptoms in his sophomore year.  He dropped out, and fell into a spiral that eventually found him homeless or in jail.  He was eventually able to get help, and now lives a precarious, though stable, life on disability.  He is one of the lucky ones, as he had family and friends who gave a shit.  Others aren’t so lucky in their support.  

Kitschy-Kitschy-Coup

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Can an entire political party be kitsch?  

This year’s Republican National Convention seemed determined to find out.  From the projected image of an American flag (complete with pole) on a giant powerpoint screen during a ceremony in which real veterans carried a real flag to the front of the convention hall, to the Thursday night viewing of 9/11 footage during which the towers fell to the strains of sentimental music and a voice-over insisting that we never forget, the 2008 Republican convention was a kitsch-o-rama of epic proportions.

If veterans with flags get some patriotic pride flowing, then a fifty-foot projection of a flag would – of course! — generate even more.  If a few homemade signs generate some enthusiasm, then mass-produced “Palin Power” signs printed in a fingerpaint font are so much the better.  Subtlety and authenticity are not watchwords for kitsch.  Above all, irony is not allowed; a cracked smile at the overwrought appeals is to be condemned.  

Random Japan

Oops

It was reported that officials at Nagoya city hall accidentally broadcast an alarm signaling an imminent missile attack to civil servants throughout Aichi Prefecture.

The Japan Council for Quality Health Care reported 209,216 blunders that “came close to becoming medical accidents” last year, an increase of 13,600 from 2006. Incidents include wrongly prescribed drugs and misused equipment.

Investigators at a nuclear power plant in Oi, Fukui Prefecture, discovered that a crack in a primary coolant pipe was five times deeper than previously suspected.

It was reported that a woman in her 40s who had a healthy breast accidentally removed at a hospital in Okayama last September has refused the medical center’s apology.

The industry ministry said that two fires that occurred in Tokyo this year were caused by “overheated” iPod nanos.

John McCain is wrong …wrong for America

John McCain believes the answer is war …Barack Obama believes the answer is peace. Which pathway will be the choice of Americans?

McCain is adamant in describing his America as one in which Americans will sit atop the mountain of the world’s bountifulness and mercilessly fight off the aspirations of our global brothers and sisters. McCain would build high fences around the perimeter of the United States, send our armies and navies out into the valley below to crush those who aspire to ascend to higher ground, to peaks of their own. McCain sees America in his own self-image …as selfish, me-firsters…. His claim of America First is a very personal mantra.

The Apocalypse of Alexandros: Chapter 2

This is Chapter 2 (as the title indicates!).  For Chapter 1 go here.  For Prologues go here.

The Cheney

The Cheney was born with the stars

The Cheney has always existed

It is the Cheney that rustles the grass behind you

As you walk through the dark woods

It is the Cheney’s eyes that you glimpse

Behind the hung clothes in the dark closet

The Cheney is it, that goes bump in the night and  that hides under the bed

It’s passage bring goosebumps

The Cheney has always been here

They say

The Cheney is in the eye

Of the shot and dying once caged quail

The Cheney is in the eyes

Of the thin Iraqi child

As she she cannot sleep from hunger

The Cheney , so they say

Spies on lovers, but for a pleasure obscene

To catch them breaking rules

The Cheney bursts forth

In the explosion of sorrows in a drunken barfight when it has all become too much

In the lovers fist and the regret that follows the change

When it cannot be taken back

The Cheney lies in the dark, waiting, plotting, watching, stalking

Feeding on despair and brimming anger

Feasts on hurt and death and pain

And gnaws at the bones of our weaknesses

It sleeps in your fears

In all our fears

Where the sunlight never goes

The Cheney has always been here, so they say

That before one passes from this place

A new one must be born

It will always haunt our dreams

To show us what true meanness is

And now…. it wears a dress???

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The Cheney

The Cheney was born with the stars

The Cheney has always existed

It is the Cheney that rustles the grass behind you

As you walk through the dark woods

It is the Cheney’s eyes that you glimpse

Behind the hung clothes in the dark closet

The Cheney is it, that goes bump in the night and  that hides under the bed

It’s passage bring goosebumps

The Cheney has always been here

They say

The Cheney is in the eye

Of the shot and dying once caged quail

The Cheney is in the eyes

Of the thin Iraqi child

As she she cannot sleep from hunger

The Cheney , so they say

Spies on lovers, but for a pleasure obscene

To catch them breaking rules

The Cheney bursts forth

In the explosion of sorrows in a drunken barfight when it has all become too much

In the lovers fist and the regret that follows the change

When it cannot be taken back

The Cheney lies in the dark, waiting, plotting, watching, stalking

Feeding on despair and brimming anger

Feasts on hurt and death and pain

And gnaws at the bones of our weaknesses

It sleeps in your fears

In all our fears

Where the sunlight never goes

The Cheney has always been here, so they say

That before one passes from this place

A new one must be born

It will always haunt our dreams

To show us what true meanness is

And now…. it wears a dress???

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Sobriety & the U.S. Presidential Race

No, this is not a post about alcoholism, and the only drunkenness to which it might refer is the manic inebriation that comes with the exercise of great power.

As the U.S. presidential race settles into its pattern of opposing camps supposedly at great odds, especially every four years — of conservative against liberal, hawk against dove, progressive versus reactionary — it is good to be reminded that underneath all of the hullaballoo (and I agree it’s hard not to be caught up in it, as detestable as Bush’s GOP has been these last seven years), that nothing about this race will really change how the U.S. is run, or rather who runs it.

Along those lines, I’d like to refer to a succinct statement of this issue from Chris Floyd, who himself quotes the insightful Gore Vidal. Reading the following, inspired by Floyd’s coverage of the U.S. intervention into Somalia and the subsequent human rights disaster that has followed, is like a splash of cold water, of stone cold sobriety regarding both the festivities and inanities of the past two convention weeks.

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