Matt Yglesias noted this afternoon that Joe Lieberman is "probably beyond shark-jumping at this point." That's no doubt true, but the Connecticut senator continues to push the embarrassment envelope at every available opportunity. Tuesday morning, for example, Lieberman, after praising Gen. David Petraeus and ambassador Ryan Crocker, seemed utterly dumbfounded by the fact that some senators are displeased by conditions in Iraq.
There's a lot to digest here, but this was the quote that stood out for me: "Hey, let's be honest about this: The Iraqi political leadership has achieved a lot more political reconciliation and progress since September than the American political leadership has. So we've got to give credit for that."
This is just so wrong, it's hard to know where to start. The obvious problem, of course, is that the senator is contradicting reality. Political reconciliation in Iraq hasn't occurred. Perhaps Lieberman missed this report from the weekend: "A new assessment of U.S. policy in Iraq by the same experts who advised the original Iraq Study Group concludes that political progress is 'so slow, halting and superficial' and political fragmentation 'so pronounced' that the United States is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago."
But it's also worth noting that the comparison between Iraq and the United States is itself foolish. As Yglesias put it, "America has a heated political debate, but liberals and conservatives aren't shooting mortars at each other and we don't have pitched battles in the streets. To compare the situation in Iraq to the persistence of strong partisan disagreement in the United States is idiotic."
Quite right. For a U.S. senator to compare Iraqi officials to Americans, and insist that Iraqis are somehow more impressive, is kind of offensive, in addition to being wrong.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
A Reminder Of The Stupidity That Is Honest Joe Lieberman
From the War Room:
An American President For America; A Crazy American For American President
Via Raw Story:
Perhaps the most remarkable story of McCain's temper involved Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi. Two former reporters covering McCain, one who witnessed the following events and one who confirmed the facts provided by the first, relayed it to me as follows: In 2006, the Arizona Republican congressional delegation had a strategy meeting. McCain repeatedly addressed two new members, congressmen Trent Franks and Rick Renzi, as 'boy.' Finally, Renzi, a former college linebacker, rose from his chair and said to McCain, "You call me that one more time and I'll kick your old ass." McCain lunged at Renzi, punches were thrown, and the two had to be physically separated. After they went to their separate offices, McCain called Renzi and demanded an apology. Renzi refused. Apparently this posture made McCain admire him, as they became fast friends.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
Somethings To Worry About
In his famous book, The Collapse of British Power (1972), Correlli Barnett reports that in the opening days of World War II Great Britain only had enough gold and foreign exchange to finance war expenditures for a few months. The British turned to the Americans to finance their ability to wage war. Barnett writes that this dependency signaled the end of British power.Link.
From their inception, America's 21st century wars against Afghanistan and Iraq have been red ink wars financed by foreigners, principally the Chinese and Japanese, who purchase the US Treasury bonds that the US government issues to finance its red ink budgets.
The Bush administration forecasts a $410 billion federal budget deficit for this year, an indication that, as the US saving rate is approximately zero, the US is not only dependent on foreigners to finance its wars but also dependent on foreigners to finance part of the US government's domestic expenditures. Foreign borrowing is paying US government salaries--perhaps that of the President himself--or funding the expenditures of the various cabinet departments. Financially, the US is not an independent country.
The Bush administration's $410 billion deficit forecast is based on the unrealistic assumption of 2.7% GDP growth in 2008, whereas in actual fact the US economy has fallen into a recession that could be severe. There will be no 2.7% growth, and the actual deficit will be substantially larger than $410 billion.
Just as the government's budget is in disarray, so is the US dollar which continues to decline in value in relation to other currencies. The dollar is under pressure not only from budget deficits, but also from very large trade deficits and from inflation expectations resulting from the Federal Reserve's effort to stabilize the very troubled financial system with large injections of liquidity.
A troubled currency and financial system and large budget and trade deficits do not present an attractive face to creditors. Yet Washington in its hubris seems to believe that the US can forever rely on the Chinese, Japanese and Saudis to finance America's life beyond its means. Imagine the shock when the day arrives that a US Treasury auction of new debt instruments is not fully subscribed.
The US has squandered $500 billion dollars on a war that serves no American purpose. Moreover, the $500 billion is only the out-of-pocket costs. It does not include the replacement cost of the destroyed equipment, the future costs of care for veterans, the cost of the interests on the loans that have financed the war, or the lost US GDP from diverting scarce resources to war. Experts who are not part of the government's spin machine estimate the cost of the Iraq war to be as much as $3 trillion.
The Republican candidate for President said he would be content to continue the war for 100 years. With what resources? When America's creditors consider our behavior they see total fiscal irresponsibility. They see a deluded country that acts as if it is a privilege for foreigners to lend to it, and a deluded country that believes that foreigners will continue to accumulate US debt until the end of time.
The fact of the matter is that the US is bankrupt. David M. Walker, Comptroller General of the US and head of the Government Accountability Office, in his December 17, 2007, report to the US Congress on the financial statements of the US government noted that "the federal government did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting (including safeguarding assets) and compliance with significant laws and regulations as of September 30, 2007." In everyday language, the US government cannot pass an audit.
Moreover, the GAO report pointed out that the accrued liabilities of the federal government "totaled approximately $53 trillion as of September 30, 2007." No funds have been set aside against this mind boggling liability.
Just so the reader understands, $53 trillion is $53,000 billion.
Frustrated by speaking to deaf ears, Walker recently resigned as head of the Government Accountability Office.
As of March 17, 2008, one Swiss franc is worth more than $1 dollar. In 1970, the exchange rate was 4.2 Swiss francs to the dollar. In 1970, $1 purchased 360 Japanese yen. Today $1 dollar purchases less than 100 yen.
If you were a creditor, would you want to hold debt in a currency that has such a poor record against the currency of a small island country that was nuked and defeated in WW II, or against a small landlocked European country that clings to its independence and is not a member of the EU?
Would you want to hold the debt of a country whose imports exceed its industrial production? According to the latest US statistics as reported in the February 28 issue of Manufacturing and Technology News, in 2007 imports were 14 percent of US GDP and US manufacturing comprised 12% of US GDP. A country whose imports exceed its industrial production cannot close its trade deficit by exporting more.
The dollar has even collapsed in value against the euro, the currency of a make-believe country that does not exist: the European Union. France, Germany, Italy, England and the other members of the EU still exist as sovereign nations. England even retains its own currency. Yet the euro hits new highs daily against the dollar.
Noam Chomsky recently wrote that America thinks that it owns the world. That is definitely the view of the neoconized Bush administration. But the fact of the matter is that the US owes the world. The US "superpower" cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid.
The US will never repay the loans. The American economy has been devastated by offshoring, by foreign competition, and by the importation of foreigners on work visas, while it holds to a free trade ideology that benefits corporate fat cats and shareholders at the expense of American labor. The dollar is failing in its role as reserve currency and will soon be abandoned.
When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to pay its bills by borrowing more from foreigners.
I sometimes wonder if the bankrupt "superpower" will be able to scrape together the resources to bring home the troops stationed in its hundreds of bases overseas, or whether they will just be abandoned.
Jersey E-Voting Sucks Worse Than Thought
No wonder the manufacturer went nuts; so much crap to hide....
You may recall that last month, the state of New Jersey asked some top notch computer security researchers, including Ed Felten, to do an independent study of Sequoia's e-voting machines. That's because there were some worrisome discrepancies in the voting totals that the machines released. When Sequoia found out about this it threatened to sue, which seems fairly odd. If the company were confident in the quality of its e-voting machines, why wouldn't it want well-respected security researchers to take a look? However, Sequoia's legal threats worked, and the state of New Jersey nixed plans for that independent review. Sequoia also offered an explanation, claiming that it was all a minor bug, where the machine merely got mixed up about party affiliation -- but the vote totals would match up in the end. Guess what? That turns out to not be true.Link.
Ed Felten has received a bunch of "summary tapes" from the last election in New Jersey, and while many of them do have the vote totals matching up correctly at the end at least two of the summary tapes simply don't add up, meaning that Sequoia's explanation of what went wrong is incorrect. Given how often the company has denied or hidden errors in its machines, despite a ton of evidence, we shouldn't be surprised that it was inaccurate in explaining away this latest problem as well. However, we should be outraged that the company refuses to allow third party researchers to investigate these machines. It's a travesty that any government would use them when they've been shown to have so many problems and the company is unwilling to allow an independent investigation.
The Saint's 16 Year Old Victim
A good question gets smeared by the rightist hate machine. Where's the straight talk now? (We know: he saves it for his Big Media supporters.)
The Wit And Wisdom Of The Saint
Hot-tempered and completely lacking in gratitude, biting the hand that feeds him, etc. Via Raw Story:
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.(Way more at the link!)
???
Don't know what it was this weekend, it was like a little silly season amongst the wingnuts. MAybe it was Max Mosley's "bust".... First the McCain/Condi silliness then this:
Not in our lifetimes will we see this. No way.
In an interview Sunday on CNN, onetime gay conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan asserted that Bush officials who worked on a memo authorizing legal use of torture "should not leave the country" because they "will be, at some point, indicted for war crimes."Link
Sullivan cited specifically former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; onetime White House lawyer John Yoo, who penned the so-called 2003 torture memo and Dave Addington, Vice President Cheney's then-lawyer and now chief of staff.
Not in our lifetimes will we see this. No way.
Quote Of The Day; Something Never To Forget
Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have. -- Harry Emerson Fosdick
McCain/Rice
What a great ticket. Reminds everyone that the Saint would be just another four of the same failed policies and failures we've had for the last eight. And obviously cancel any racial issue if Obama is nominated. And of course Condoleeza'll get the Christofascists into the voting booths.
Jeez.
What kind of whackos make up this crap, what kind of whackos make any sort of story out of this?
Jeez.
What kind of whackos make up this crap, what kind of whackos make any sort of story out of this?
Monday, April 07, 2008
Quote Of The Day From The Good Old Days (*Sigh*...)
I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it. -- Thomas Jefferson
Our Leaders' Surge Questioned -- By Its Military
The Israeli experience in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 should warn Americans against having an Army that has become so focused on irregular and counterinsurgency warfare that it can no longer fight large battles against a conventional enemy. In an important essay in the Journal of Strategic Studies, Israeli scholar Avi Kober recently noted that years of policing by the Israeli Army in its territories had degraded its ability to fight the Hezbollah enemy that used conventional tactics. The result was a significant battlefield defeat for the Israeli Army.Link.
The American Army is in a similar condition today, and we should be worried.
A misleading current narrative contends that the recent lowering of violence in Iraq is primarily due to the American "surge" and the application of so-called "new" counterinsurgency methods. Because these new counterinsurgency methods have worked in Iraq, the thinking goes, why not try them in other places, such as Afghanistan? This hyper-emphasis on counterinsurgency puts the American Army in a perilous condition. Its ability to fight wars consisting of head-on battles using tanks and mechanized infantry is in danger of atrophy.
The truth is that American combat forces in Iraq have been conducting counterinsurgency operations successfully and pretty much by the book since about the middle of 2004. By that time, U.S. commanders had identified the mistakes of the first few months of the occupation, had absorbed a significant number of lessons learned from previous counterinsurgencies, and had started to train units on correct counterinsurgency methods prior to their deployments.
Recent proclamations by American political leaders, neoconservative writers, and some serving Army officers who have taken part in the surge, however, fly in the face of this reality.
They say that it took almost five years of fumbling and slow learning for the American Army to finally begin to get it right in February 2007 under Gen. David Patraeus, at the outset of the surge. In this telling, the dramatic lowering of violence in Iraq in the summer of 2007 was caused primarily by the Army doing counterinsurgency operations "right" and by the increased number of troops.
The presumptive Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain said in a recent speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars that the surge's "new battle plan is succeeding where our previous tactics failed." A senior Army officer who was a member of Gen. Patraeus's "brain trust" characterized American operations prior to the surge as consisting of hunkering down on large bases, unable to protect the Iraqi people.
Neoconservative writer Clifford May noted that, prior to the surge, American combat forces had pretty much quit the country while an Iraq Civil War raged around them.
This commentary is simplistic and unfair. It does not accurately represent what was happening prior to the surge at the small unit level, where platoons, companies, and battalions were successfully employing counterinsurgency tactics before the surge had even been conceived.
At that level, there has been no significant change since the middle of 2004. Those who have observed the war firsthand know this. A reporter for a major national newspaper who has spent the last few years embedded with American Army combat outfits observed to me that by and large American combat units have conducted operations in the same way since prior to the surge: conducting reconnaissance to gain information on the enemy; meeting with Iraqi locals to help improve security, governance and services; conducting combined patrols and operations with the Iraqi Security Forces; cleaning up garbage and opening schools; capturing and killing the enemy; and talking to locals to assess their needs and problems. At the small unit level, the primary mission of platoons, companies, and battalions has been the protection of the Iraqi people.
There has been one notable difference between surge and pre-surge operating methods: the use of combat outposts. Since the surge, such outposts have been increasingly used by small numbers of American combat soldiers to camp in Iraqi neighborhoods. Baghdad has seen a particularly substantial increase in the use of combat outposts. Proponents of the surge credit them and the troops occupying them with the drastic downturn in violence that began in the summer of 2007.
History shows that the use of combat outposts against insurgents can prove successful. The French officer David Galula, who fought insurgents in French Algeria from 1956 to 1958, used combat outposts in small villages to isolate the insurgents from the people. Galula's area of responsibility was very small and was located deep inside the north Algerian mountains. The local population totaled about 15,000, and they were isolated from the few major urban areas in Algeria. With his infantry company of about 150 men, Galula could easily isolate and control the few villages in his area by placing platoons in these outposts.
Still, in this relatively straightforward environment, it took Galula close to a year and a half to pacify the area by separating the insurgents from the people. Galula later wrote a short book about his experiences, which has heavily influenced the American Army's current approach to counterinsurgency.
If Galula needed almost 18 months to succeed in northern Algeria, where conditions were much more suitable to a classic counterinsurgency campaign than today's Iraq (a multi-sectarian landscape with many sides fighting each other), it is naïve to believe the American surge in Iraq could succeed in a matter of months.
The reduction in violence has had more to do with the Iraqis than the Americans. First, senior American leaders began paying our former enemies -- non-al-Qaida Sunni insurgents -- large amounts of money to become U.S. allies in fighting al-Qaida. Second, the Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr announced a six-month ceasefire and stood down his attacks against Iraqi Sunnis and coalition forces; recently, he extended the cease-fire for another six months. Absent those two necessary conditions, there would have been no let up in the level of violence despite the surge.
If U.S. commanders and policymakers believe that the surge lowered violence by applying "new" counterinsurgency methods at the small unit level, then the U.S. military might be tempted to travel down the counterinsurgency path many times again, placing further strain on an already heavily strained American Army, and dangerously damaging its ability to fight the sort of battles that the Israelis tried, and failed, to win against Hezbollah in Lebanon in summer 2006.
Gian P. Gentile, an active duty Army lieutenant colonel, commanded a combat battalion in west Baghdad in 2006.
The GOP Way: Always Use The More Expensive, Less Efficient Way
Three benefits: Makes government look ineffectual; gets public money into the wallets of cronies in the private sector; and, in this case, debases our votes if not flat-out control electoral outcomes. (The last is another reason McCain is as good as elected; there will be just enough hacking to vote him in.)
Truly, the Golden Age is upon us....
Wired:
Truly, the Golden Age is upon us....
Wired:
One reason election officials around the country have given for purchasing touch-screen voting machines is that they say the systems save money -- both in the cost of printing paper ballots and in storing them after an election. Officials have made this claim, despite the fact that the machines carry a steep price tag (about $3,000 per machine).
So SaveOurVotes (.pdf), a voting integrity group in Maryland, decided to see if the 19,000 touch-screen machines their state purchased really did save money. The results aren't really a surprise -- the machines are wildly more expensive than anyone anticipated. But just how expensive they are makes their analysis mandatory reading for any legislators and state or county budget committees that approve voting equipment purchases.
Maryland uses one system statewide -- touch-screen machines made by Diebold Election Systems -- which it purchased in batches in 2002 and 2003. A loan of about $67 million was taken out from the state treasury to pay Diebold for the machines, which counties are still paying off. They'll continue to pay for the machines through 2014, even though the state has since decided to scrap the touch-screen machines, due to security concerns, and change to optical-scan machines by 2010.
Nonetheless, according to SaveOurVotes' figures, by the end of the presidential election this year, Maryland will have spent more than $97.5 million on the machines it's abandoning, but only about half of that can be attributed to the actual cost of purchasing the machines.
At least $44 million of it went to Diebold just for operation and maintenance of the machines, which covered repairs (the cost of which increases as machines age), storage of the machines as well as programming, testing and transporting them to precincts on election days. In the case of transportation, the state contracts with Diebold to deliver the machines from warehouses, but Diebold doesn't do the deliveries itself; instead it subcontracts the service to other vendors (see this story about one of the delivery companies Diebold hired whose owner is the former chair of Maryland's state Republican Party).
Diebold has also been paid to train workers to use the machines as well as do voter outreach to familiarize voters with the equipment -- and in the process essentially selling voters on the merits of their machines.
Rebecca Wilson, co-director of SaveOurVotes, says, "I think people don't understand that e-voting is a bad idea not just because of its insecurities but because it's really bad public policy to have these really expensive machines. The cost never goes down. In fact the cost only goes up as the machines age and need more parts and upgrading.
"They take up huge amounts of warehouse space in warehouses that need to be air-conditioned," she continues. "They have to recharge the batteries every six months. And (yet) we only haul them out about once a year (for elections)."
Prior to purchasing the touch-screen machines, about 19 of Maryland's 24 voting districts used optical-scan machines (yes, the state's recent decision to scrap touch-screen machines means that counties that were forced in 2003 to scrap their optical-scan machines and purchase new touch-screen machines are now being told they have to go back to optical-scan machines).
SaveOurVotes examined those counties and compared the cost of the optical-scan equipment they previously used to the touch-screen machines they were forced to buy. The cost for most counties in this category increased 179 percent per voter on average. In at least one county, the cost increased 866 percent per voter -- from a total cost of about $22,000 in 2001 to $266,000 in 2007.
Optical-scan machines, which use a paper ballot that is run through a scanner, are less expensive because counties need fewer of them. A county can opt for one scanner per precinct (at a cost of about $4,000 per unit) or use several dozen central-based scanners at the county election headquarters to do the task. Counties that use touch-screen machines, however, have to buy between 5 and 10 machines per precinct (at a cost of between $15,000 and $30,000 per precinct).
This explains in part why voting machine companies have heavily marketed their touch-screen machines over their optical-scan products and have only recently been pushing their optical-scan machines since states have begun to ban touch-screen machines due to security and reliability concerns.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
Hav-A-Laff!! Funny/Not Funny Joke
I tried to tell my son how important it isLink.
to work hard, do well in school, avoid drugs
and serve in the military. I told him if he
doesn't do those things he might end up being
president, and then no one would like him.
(Jim Evarts)
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