Maverick this!  

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a U.S. troop surge in 2007, graphic evidence of ethnic cleansing that preceded a drop in violence, according to a report published on Friday.

The images support the view of international refugee organizations and Iraq experts that a major population shift was a key factor in the decline in sectarian violence, particularly in the Iraqi capital, the epicenter of the bloodletting in which hundreds of thousands were killed.

Minority Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighborhoods by Shi’ite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. The bombing, blamed on the Sunni militant group al Qaeda, sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

Please disregard further blathering about how the surge is working as it is disingenuine.  

You know, during the Revolutionary War, George Washington was approached by his generals with the idea of torturing British soldiers to extract strategic information. At that time, the British were torturing our soldiers in New York Harbor on coffin ships and killing them by the dozens every day. Washington said to them, “I would rather lose the war, because this is the first nation in history that is based upon an idea, and the idea is one of essential human dignity and justice.” And he said, “We’re not—I’d rather the British continue to rule us than become—than to lose that.” And, you know, he established codes of conduct for the treatment of prisoners, fair treatment of prisoners and humane treatment. And the Hessians that he captured on Christmas Eve were so shocked by the good treatment they received from the American captors that after two weeks in prison, they agreed to walk unguarded all the way to POW camps in western Pennsylvania, and not a single one escaped. 

During the Civil War, Lincoln’s general suggested—made the suggestion of torture, and he was so horrified by the idea, that he created a committee to establish a standards—a report with standards for the fair treatment and humane treatment of prisoners of war. And eighty years later, that document became the Geneva Convention. 

During World War II, Eisenhower was asked about torturing Germans at a time when Nazis were torturing our prisoners and POWs. And Eisenhower said, “Americans don’t do that.” And he said—and during World War II, German soldiers surrendered to American soldiers by the thousands, because they had heard from their fathers, who fought in World War I, “Always surrender to an American, because Americans don’t torture people.” 

The so-called father of our country, George Washington, would not torture those who tortured soldiers fighting for American ideals. George W. Bush says he will only torture needfully. This is a pivotal time for Americans, when we choose either the ideals our great country was founded on, ideal so great we were willing to kill for them, or we can choose the polar opposite. 

You know, a few weeks ago, I [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] had John Dean on my show on Air America. And John Dean, as you know, was the counselor to President Nixon during the Watergate scandal. And Dean said to me—Dean went to prison for his participation in the cover-up. And he said, “You know, we eavesdropped illegally on one office, and I went to jail for four months, and my boss was impeached and then forced to resign.” And he said, “These people have illegally eavesdropped on hundreds of thousands of Americans.” And he said, “Where’s the impeachment? Where are the convictions? Where’s the imprisonment? Where’s the jail term? Where is the American press? Where is the indignation?” 

Remember how I said the fiscal stimulus was going to be absolute bullshit, not do a drop of good for our economy, and just put our nation further in debt, meaning that the 160 billion dollars will actually cost us around 200 billion in future taxes? From the Wall St. Journal:

Congress enacted the tax rebate program earlier this year because it perceived a growing risk of recession. In addition, it feared monetary policy alone would not be effective because of the dysfunctional credit markets. As American taxpayers know, most of the rebate checks have now been mailed and cashed.

Those of us who supported this fiscal package reasoned that the program would boost consumer confidence as well as available cash. We hoped the combination would cause households to spend a substantial fraction of the rebate dollars, leading to more production and employment.

The evidence is now in and that optimism was unwarranted. Recent government statistics show that only between 10% and 20% of the rebate dollars were spent. The rebates added nearly $80 billion to the permanent national debt but less than $20 billion to consumer spending. This experience confirms earlier studies showing that one-time tax rebates are not a cost-effective way to increase economic activity.

That’s right, our government is as fucking clueless as ever. And it wants to do more ‘good’ for us.

Well shit, even Iraq was invaded ‘with [stated] good intentions’  - and you see where that’s gotten us.

To paraphrase MC Hawking, “fuck, fuck, fuck the electorate.” And yes, I do mean electorate as in you and I the voters, because we’re the dumbasses that snoozed while electing C students (and that’s a gentleman’s C ) as the most powerful man in the modern world.

Suskind reports that in 2003 the White House ordered the CIA to forge and disseminate false intelligence documents linking al-Qaeda and Iraq. The CIA allegedly forged a letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. It was backdated July 1, 2001 and stated 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta was trained for his mission in Iraq.

Ron Suskind interviewed Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, Britain’s secret intelligence service. Dearlove said Britain received intelligence in the beginning of 2003 about Iraq’s lack of WMDs, but the Bush administration buried the information. Dearlove told Suskind, “The problem was the Cheney crowd was in too much of a hurry, really. Bush never resisted them quite strongly enough.”

Lets all join hands and wish that the House Judiciary Committee investigation actually goes somewhere and isn’t stalled by Republicans claiming ‘partisan politics’ - notice how they always do this when there is criminal wrongdoing involving Republicans, but when John Edwards cheats on his wife, it’s front page news everywhere.

Energy Department spokeswoman Angela Hill said the department will review Warner’s letter but added, “If Congress is serious about addressing gasoline prices, they must take action on expanding domestic oil and natural gas production.”

Ever notice how every time gas prices comes out of the mouth of one of this administration’s puppets they always manage to link any situation to expanding domestic oil and natural gas production, “if we’re serious.” Even though most reputable sources say that domestic production increases will likely mean about 3 cents difference at the pumps a few years down the road, if we’re lucky. The Saudis bumping up their output isn’t even expected to have much of an impact on the price of oil. What we need is a transition from an oil-centric situation to a locally-sourced energy. You know, it’s like, it’s always cheaper to grow your own vegetables than to buy from the store. 1 tomato plant costs about 5 bucks. 4 ‘good’ tomatoes cost about 5 bucks. Do the math. Tomatoes are so easy a 20$ water timer will get you literally more tomatoes than you can eat in a year from one plant. Solar power is easy. It’s so easy, it only requires labor once every 30 years, and hosing down once a year or so.

Now, imagine a grid where the grid is the power source. Everyone could hook up with their neighbors, share power when they needed it - need to run the hairdryer for 5 minutes but it’s a cloudy day? Done. (Yes, I know solar charges batteries, yes, I know it works on cloudy days because clouds don’t stop UV, the major source of solar kilowatts, I’m oversimplifying.) Now - imagine solar on the top of all businesses. I’ll go you one better - imagine solar-roofed parking lots, finally we’ll ALWAYS be able to park in the shade, and then you can just plug in your electric car while you shop - every store will be a refueling station, and can make extra money that way. Go one step further, solarize our transportation grid with visible-light transparent solar films, we should be able to acheive that. If we pushed hard enough, we could acheive energy independence and then some.

Think about it. The current most prolific form of life on the surface of this earth is plants - they cover pretty much every square inch they possibly can. They are also the most efficient form of solar collection we currently know. A few pounds of plant matter will power a human for an entire day, which takes about 2000 calories - nutritional calories are actually kilocalories, so that’s 2,000,000 calories, now at 4.184 Joules per Calorie this give us 8300000 Joules per day - to get Watts per day we’ll have to devide the Joules by the time in seconds, 3600 to be precise, and we get 2.3 kilowatts per day. And that’s not even using all of it - you poop something out, right? If we cover the world in solar, not only will we be drowning in kilowatts, the ground will be a more pleasant, weather-protected experience, and stink less with no polluting vehicles.

Reuters reports in:

U.S. escalating covert operations against Iran - report

that

U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush’s funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.

The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine’s July 7 and 14 issue, centers around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.

All that fun stuff about us trying to provoke an armed response against Iranian national entities that actually may be connected to al Qaeda as flimsy pretext to invade Iran ‘in their defense’ aside, I find it odd that Reuters did not link to the New Yorker article it was reporting on.

You can find the whole Seymour M. Hersh article on Iran here.

Who knows, Iran may yet become a military four letter work here in the U.S. I hope not.

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

Absolutely astonishing.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

It makes perfect sense in a dirty-fuel fueled economy whose dirty money has bought dirty politicians.

This sounds like insanity to me - prices on everything are steadily climbing, the housing sector is in the toilet and about to be flushed, and the US is patting itself on the back for making steel pipes from China that are used heavily in house building more than 100% more expensive, to protect American steel interested from Chinese Government Subsidies (all caps because they’re damned scary, right?)

Nevermind that we subsidize the shit out of things. The Iraq war can be seen as a major subsidy for the US military-industrial complex (our Defense budget hasn’t balooned to 3/4th of a trillion dollars for no reason), we subsidize corn growing, ethanol, and oil, YES OIL, the commodity that has nearly sextupled in price since Bush took office.  (By the way, if you want to make money is a sleazy way, the flooding in Iowa has decimated their corn and soybean fields - load up on futures in those two crop - you’ll hate yourself in the morning but will probably make some money. I am not going to do this.) Now for a bit of Shedlockian commentary on this subject, since he knows more than I:

We have tariffs, on agricultural products, ethanol, and scores of other items already. We have bills that restrict the importation of drugs from Canada and Mexico. Those tariffs are increasing the prices consumers (and businesses) have to pay.

The bill effectively says “prices are not high enough, let’s raise them”. It will not save a single job. It will crush imports of these products and that means fewer doc jobs and transportation jobs. It will cause prices to rise for those that need pipes or fencing.

Steel makers will misguidedly cheer this bill, but fence installers sure won’t. Consumers and businesses are being squeezed. No one anywhere can afford higher prices. For every steel making job we save (I doubt any), we will lose 10 times as many fence installing and doc unloading jobs.

Higher Prices = Less Demand. The economy and jobs are already weakening and this will increase that weakness.

I‘m not sure why he’s calling dock workers doc workers - at first I was like “why are doctors gonna be hurt by this?” but then I realized. And he goes on to the probably Chinese response:

The question is whether or not China retaliates. If the US demands higher prices, China could simply voluntarily tax all goods to the US with an export tax and make a statement “You want higher prices, here, you can have them”. At least that way, China keeps the money instead of the US collecting a tariff.

He goes on to describe how the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1929, and how it didn’t cause the Great Depression, but it did serve to further kick us while we were down - foreign governments just raised the prices on their goods, and Canada imposed a 30% tariff on all imported US goods, which kicked imports down by 2/3rds.

This current tariff is nothing more than pandering for political popularity, and will cause nothing more than economic strife.

President Bush asserted executive privilege Friday to withhold documents from a congressional investigation into whether he pressured the Environmental Protection Agency to weaken decisions on smog and greenhouse gases.

Which, judging from  other instances of the use of executive privilege in this Administration, is basically an admission of guilt.