Last Call

An interesting catfight shaping up between conservative columnist (and token NPR "centrist") David Frum and Sarah Palin.  Frum is apparently pissed that Palin's trip to Israel wasn't booked through the Jewish conservative group that Frum is a board member of, the Republican Jewish Coalition.

The RJC played an especially important role in 2008, the election in which Palin burst onto the national stage — a very unpromising year for the GOP. Barack Obama out-raised John McCain in an election in which many of the party’s usual donors stayed on the sidelines. Yet RJC members continued to fundraise for McCain-Palin, like the last guy to hold the pass, outnumbered and outgunned.

Most Republican presidential aspirants consider the RJC a group whose support is very much worth having. Which is why virtually every major and long-shot Republican candidate except Palin has addressed an RJC meeting: Romney often, Newt Gingrich often, Tim Pawlenty often. Texas Gov. Rick Perry is stopping by the group’s April Las Vegas meeting … just in case.

Obviously the RJC has no monopoly on Israel visitation rights. Mike Huckabee for example has organized his own trips. But Huckabee has been to Israel more than 15 times, he knows the country and its leadership intimately, and hardly requires any introduction from anybody.

But with somebody like Palin making a first visit — dealing with important geopolitical sensitivities — and trying to make a positive impression on American friends of Israel — the design of a trip carries special significance.

Over the months since November 2008, the RJC had repeatedly offered to organize an Israel tour for Palin. They have repeatedly invited Palin to speak at their meetings. As a member of the RJC board, I know that Palin’s team engaged in extended conversations about these invitations. Yet they were abruptly shelved. The RJC organization learned that its invitation would not be accepted the same way everybody else did: by reading the newspaper.

Why? We cannot know for certain. But we do know this: Some members of the RJC board — including me, and one or two others — have publicly said critical things about Palin.

The seeming result: Palin decided the RJC was dead to her.

Which is of course her prerogative.

Frum's pretty bent out of shape here.  Then again, if Palin really is avoiding the RJC because of criticism (and she's pretty thin skinned when it comes to the right) then Frum just pretty much buried his cause under a couple tons of rubble.

So how long will it take to have David Frum expelled from the Happy Conservative Club for daring to go after Palin?  Might get pretty interesting, because Frum is damned right about the RJC being a heavy hitter in GOP contender circles.  Few people are going to go after Frum on this...but few people are going to go after Palin, either.

Popcorn, anyone?

A Confederacy Of Dunces

Every year some poll or news organization gives out the official US Citizenship Test to a bunch of Americans, and every year we collectively look like idiots as this time around some 38% of Americans botched basic civics.

They’re the sort of scores that drive high-school history teachers to drink. When NEWSWEEK recently asked 1,000 U.S. citizens to take America’s official citizenship test, 29 percent couldn’t name the vice president. Seventy-three percent couldn’t correctly say why we fought the Cold War. Forty-four percent were unable to define the Bill of Rights. And 6 percent couldn’t even circle Independence Day on a calendar.

Don’t get us wrong: civic ignorance is nothing new. For as long as they’ve existed, Americans have been misunderstanding checks and balances and misidentifying their senators. And they’ve been lamenting the philistinism of their peers ever since pollsters started publishing these dispiriting surveys back in Harry Truman’s day. (He was a president, by the way.) According to a study by Michael X. Delli Carpini, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, the yearly shifts in civic knowledge since World War II have averaged out to “slightly under 1 percent.”

But the world has changed. And unfortunately, it’s becoming more and more inhospitable to incurious know-nothings—like us.

As Kitty Smith alluded to earlier today, that makes us more pliable and easier to rule.  An informed populace capable of critical thinking, able to respond with reasoned logic to counter the media monsoon that deluges us daily is not what politicians and especially Republican politicians want.

And of course the Republican answer to "Why are we so stupid?" is because "The elitist educators are making you dumb, let's cut education money!"  Check the rest of Newsweek's article carefully.

It doesn’t help that the United States has one of the highest levels of income inequality in the developed world, with the top 400 households raking in more money than the bottom 60 percent combined. As Dalton Conley, an NYU sociologist, explains, “it’s like comparing apples and oranges. Unlike Denmark, we have a lot of very poor people without access to good education, and a huge immigrant population that doesn’t even speak English.” When surveys focus on well-off, native-born respondents, the U.S. actually holds its own against Europe.

The first sentence of the paragraph is the important one.  It's the last one that undoes it all, however.  "It's the poor and the immigrants who don't speak English who are making us dumb!"  And of course, the poor and foreign-born are "responsible" for the first sentence of the paragraph, too.  "Well that bottom 60% must be those damn brown people."

Never mind that that 60% mark is "everyone who makes less than $40,000 a year" or so.

Exciting New Horizons In Obama Derangement Syndrome

Old broken-down ODS meme:  Obama won't bomb Libya cause he's a wuss.

New hotness ODS meme:  Hillary's calling the shots now.  Doug J:

My favorite right-wing angle on Libya is that Hillary Clinton, not Obama, is the one who was tough enough to go toe-to-toe with Gaddafi. National Review (not linking) is running a poll that asks “In your view, who is tougher, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama?” and Hillary is winning 98 to 2 among the knuckle draggers who visit that website.

Ahh, the right's two favorites combine like chocolate and peanut butter.  Obama, the effete elitist and Hillary's really A MAN, baby!

Backhanded compliments for Hillary Clinton to hit Obama for the next, oh, forever. Hail Hillary, the conquering hero!

For years, Ms. Clinton has endured abuse from all points on the U.S. political spectrum. Yet in Libya, should the rebellion prevail, she would become properly regarded as nothing short of a diplomatic heroine to the Libyan people.

So shall it be written, so shall it be.

That's Not How The Munchies Work, You Know

A Denver medical marijuana dispensary says it is literally trading a ton of joints for a ton of food.

Urban Cannabis, 2383 S. Downing St., is giving out free pre-rolled marijuana cigarettes to qualified medical marijuana patients who bring in four 8-ounce, canned food items.

They hope to raise 2,000 pounds of food items for Denver's indigent and homeless population. The effort started March 1 and will continue through April 20 or until the 2,000 pound goal has been reached.
So far, the business has collected 330 cans, said Amy DiIullo, sales director for Urban Cannabis.

I have to give then points for creativity and doing some good.  Yay for the dirty stinking hippies!

AT&T Takes Top Spot With Acquisition

It's official.  AT&T has purchased T-Mobile, USA from its parent company, Deutsche Telekom.  For 39 billion dollars, they hope to seal the deal in twelve months, under scrutiny from antitrust enforcement and consumer watchdogs.  If successful, this will make AT&T the largest provider in the nation, and solidify the direction mobile technology will take. 

One concern is that the customers will bear the brunt of this deal, with the lack of competition sure to drive up prices.  Verizon Wireless will hold a strong second, but this is likely a belated death blow for Sprint.  With Sprint essentially out of the running, the market will turn to an either/or scenario that could potentially drive up prices.  AT&T has some of the priciest plans on the market, and T-Mobile has long beat the competition with rate plans and non-contract options.

Right now, there are a lot of unanswered questions.  As this develops, I'll be keeping up on the changes and their impact.  This is a big first step of many, and will not just shape the future for cell phone customers, but how data is transferred to all devices.  This is the beginning of cementing how we will deliver massive data, and brings up technical questions and other concerns such as security and accountability.

More to come.

To The Shores Of Tripoli, Part 6

Josh Marshall goes over the valid concerns of Operation Odyssey Dawn.

So let's review: No clear national or even humanitarian interest for military intervention. Intervening well past the point where our intervention can have a decisive effect. And finally, intervening under circumstances in which the reviled autocrat seems to hold the strategic initiative against us. This all strikes me as a very bad footing to go in on.

And this doesn't even get us to this being the third concurrent war in a Muslim nation and the second in an Arab one. Or the fact that the controversial baggage from those two wars we carry into this one, taking ownership of it, introducing a layer of 'The West versus lands of Islam' drama to this basically domestic situation and giving Qaddafi himself or perhaps one of his sons the ability to actually start mobilization some public or international opinion against us.

I can imagine many of the criticisms of the points I've made. And listening to them I think I'd find myself agreeing in general with a lot of it. But it strikes me as a mess, poorly conceived, ginned up by folks with their own weird agendas, carried out at a point well past the point that it was going to accomplish anything. Just all really bad. 

And those are still valid concerns and ones I agree with.  Libya is a huge gray area, frankly.  I don't know what winning consists of, other than the total ouster of Qaddafi.  But what then?  Nobody's asking that question.

What I am saying is that attacking Obama over this is completely counter-productive.  No, saying you're against Libya doesn't make you a Naderite.  But saying "Okay, we're doing this, let's do this right" doesn't make you a Cheneyite, either.

Education Gets Rust Belted

Another state that's having problems with a new Republican governor is Pennsylvania and GOP Gov. Tom Corbett, who has decided he's taking out the state's budget shortfall out on the state's education system.  But not all Republicans are willing to jump off that particular cliff.

The state House Appropriations chairman says he cannot support Gov. Tom Corbett’s proposed $27.3 billion general fund budget proposal because of the cuts in education funding.

“I could not support it as it stands now, with the education cuts,” state Rep. William Adolph, R-Delaware, said Tuesday during a break between a series of day-long committee hearings on departmental budgets.
Adolph wasn’t the only committee member apparently having second thoughts about the Republican governor’s budget that is $700 million less than the current one, and which trims $600 million from education funding.

Much of the angst was triggered by State Treasurer Rob McCord’s presentation indicating that should the proposed higher education cuts remain in place, tuition will rise to the point that many parents will not have enough money for their child’s tuition.

Penn State President Graham Spanier, following Corbett’s budget address, said the $180 million cut in his school’s funding could cause increased tuition, layoffs and the closing of regional campuses. The proposed cut in state funding is about a 4 percent cut in Penn State’s overall operating budget.

Cutting more than half a billion from state education and universities certainly makes Corbett look like an uncaring bastard, and that's because he is one.  I can understand making some small cuts to some programs at universities or raising tuition, but slicing up the budget to force the university system to take drastic measures is just silly.  And once again, note that tax increases are simply off the table, every dollar of the budget shortfall has to come from cuts, in this case a near 50% cut in state university funding.

You have to wonder why the GOP hate education and teachers so much.

Searching For Answers In Google Versus China

Google and China are at it again.

Google has accused the Chinese government of disrupting Gmail in the country, making it difficult in the last few weeks for users here to gain access to the company’s popular e-mail service.


Google said that it was not having any technical problems with Google’s main Web site or Gmail service in China.

“There is no issue on our side; we have checked extensively,” Google said in a statement released Sunday. “This is a government blockage, carefully designed to look like the problem is with Gmail.”

Analysts who track Web developments say that the Chinese government may be intentionally disrupting access to Google and other Web services as part of a campaign to tighten Internet controls and censor material.

Calls to China’s Foreign Ministry were not returned Sunday. Beijing has long had some of the world’s strictest Internet controls. But after pro-democracy demonstrations broke out in the Middle East in January, the Chinese government seems to have intensified effort to censor Web content and disrupt Web searches related to calls for similar protests in China. 

There's a surprise, China has decided that the lesson from its last tangle with Google is not to stop cracking down on internet freedom, it's to make it look like technical problems instead and to blame Google.  Pretty clever, but it only works once.

Still, this seems to suggest China is very concerned about the wave of unrest in the Middle East and North Africa and will do everything it can to stop an uprising in China before it can be allowed to start, including rolling over Google's searches.

Of course, if Google hasn't figured this out by now that their presence in China is completely expendable, it's their own fault.

StupidiNews!

• Qaddafi's whereabouts are unknown as a second night of airstrikes rock Libyan air defenses, leaving his army in disarray.
• House Republicans want to vote on confirming "In God We Trust" as the nation's motto.
• Egyptians voted overwhelmingly to change the country's constitution to strip Mubarak-era restrictions ahead of September's general election.
• T-Mobile's parent company Deutsche Telekom stock soared after AT&T agreed to buy T-Mobile's US operations for $39 billion in cash and stock, creating the largest US mobile carrier.
• University researchers in the US claim that the internet is vulnerable to having backbone control traffic swamped by denial of service attacks, but actually doing it would be extremely difficult.

Last Call

Tonight's lesson:  misdirection.

In his press briefing earlier this afternoon, U.S. Vice Adm. Bill Gortney emphasized that the international coalition's air campaign is not deisgned to target Gadhafi, but is limited to enforcing a no-fly zone and preventing Gadhafi's forces from further pressing rebel positions.


"We are not going after Gadhafi," Gortney said at the Pentagon. "Regime forces are more pressed and less free to maneuver."

One hour later:

AS fresh blasts rock Tripoli and smoke rises near Muammar Gaddafi's residence, Libya has announced an immediate new ceasefire - the second in a matter of days. 

Misdirection!



All the cool kids are doing it. After all, the Pentagon wasn't going after him. We didn't say anything about the other nations in the coalition, now did we.

Attention Useful Idiots

The Republican Party needs YOU to keep attacking President Obama on Libya to continue to demoralize the left.  Step 1, GOP warpig hypocrisy:

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on Sunday called on President Barack Obama to explain the U.S. mission in Libya and how his administration intends to achieve its goals.

“The president is the commander-in-chief. But the administration has a responsibility to define for the American people, the Congress and our troops, what the mission in Libya is,” Boehner, a Republican, said in a statement.

“Before any further military commitments are made, the administration must do a better job of communicating to the American people and to Congress about our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved,” he said.

Right.  The same Orange Julius that asked no questions about Bush's years in Iraq and said this about our troops there:

"Long term, the investment that we’re making today will be a small price if we’re able to stop Al Qaeda here, if we’re able to stabilize the Middle East. It’s not only going to be a small price for the near future, but think about the future for our kids and their kids," he said.

Yeah, the thousands of our troops who died in Iraq?  Small price to pay in a war that dragged on for years, redefined the term "mission creep" and is STILL GOING ON.  But even though our mission in Libya has been so far limited to a bunch of cruise missiles, OJ wants to know what our mission is.  Iraq needed no explanation because SHUT UP AND LISTEN TO OUR GENERALS.

Moonie Times today:  "Obama's Illegal War"

With Thursday’s passage of United Natons Security Council resolution 1973, the United States is set to go to war against Libya. Removing Moammar Gadhafi from power would probably advance the cause of freedom, but the United Nations has no legal authority to take a step of this magnitude. By bowing to the will of the U.N. Security Council, President Obama is diluting the sovereign power of the United States.

Same Moonie Times six months ago:

President Obama was granted an opportunity to give a victory speech about Iraq on Tuesday, courtesy of George W. Bush. He mentioned President Bush in passing, essentially damning him with faint praise. If Mr. Bush had followed Mr. Obama’s strategic recommendations in 2007, the war in Iraq would have been lost years ago.

The Obama haters are dragging up all the same arguments they laughed at eight years ago.  The Useful Idiots on the left are going right along with the script, too.  So go ahead and watch the TV and blame Obama, guys...and watch the Republicans finish the country off in 2012.  The right is already attacking Obama as "having no exit strategy" in Libya, which coming from any Bush supporter is laughable.  But hey, let's continue to give these assholes cover, eh?

Or you know, you guys could just go The Full Nader.

Globe's A-Poppin

With more Yemeni government officials resigning in protest over the bloody crackdown in Sanaa on Friday, things are getting very serious and complicated in the Gulf states.

Yemen's ambassador to the United Nations Abdullah Alsaidi has resigned, the latest high-ranking member of President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government to quit in protest against the killing of dozens of demonstrators.

Snipers killed up to 42 protesters among crowds that flocked to a sit-in at Sanaa University after Friday prayers. The opposition says at least seven snipers were caught carrying government identity cards, a charge the government has denied.

"Mr. Alsaidi has sent his resignation to the president's office and the Foreign Ministry," a Yemeni Foreign Ministry official said on Sunday, and added that it was in protest at the Friday violence.

Defying a crackdown after the government called a state of emergency, the opposition has vowed to keep up its pressure to end Saleh's 32-year rule in the poor Arabian Peninsula state, a neighbor of Saudi Arabia and a U.S. ally against al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, a bit to the northeast of Yemen, protests and crackdowns in Syria are underway.

Crowds set fire to the headquarters of the ruling Baath Party in the Syrian city of Deraa Sunday, residents said, as the wave of unrest in the Arab world shook even one of its most authoritarian states.

The demonstrators also set ablaze the main courts complex and two phone company branches. One of the firms, Syriatel, is owned by President Bashar al-Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf.

"They burned the symbols of oppression and corruption," an activist said. "The banks nearby were not touched."

Thousands rallied to demand an end to 48 years of emergency law in the southern city, on the third consecutive day of protests emerging as the biggest ever challenge to Syria's ruling party since it seized power nearly half a century ago.

"No, no to emergency law. We are a people infatuated with freedom," marchers chanted, despite the arrival in Deraa of a government delegation to pay condolences to relatives of victims killed by security forces in demonstrations there this week.

Arab rulers are falling apart, and the people rising up are treating both US intervention (that gave them the status quo of repressive, authoritarian rule) and Islamist violence (which they have seen lead to death and destruction in both Sunni and Shi'a states) as the enemy.

It's a pretty dangerous situation from Tunisia all the way over to Pakistan and the war in Libya, crackdowns in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Iran aren't helping, and neither is the quasi-military coup in Egypt.  We're rapidly reaching a fully out-of-control situation here.

Land Of The Rising Core Temperature, Part 13

Finally, Japanese nuclear officials and TEPCO workers are starting to get some of the less damaged reactors under control, and some of the more critical ones stabilized at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Workers began to see some success in their battle to cool down reactors at the quake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant Sunday, but Japanese officials said they may need to release additional radioactive gas into the air.

The plant's owner, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said electricity was being supplied to a switchboard in reactor No. 2.

But officials said they were monitoring reactor No. 3 to determine whether to release gas to reduce mounting pressure in the containment vessel -- the steel and concrete shell that insulates radioactive material inside.

Power company officials said pressure was higher than previous readings -- but stable -- Sunday afternoon. And Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the pressure increase did not require "an immediate release of the air at this moment."

Still, "even in the best scenario, there will be a lot of bumps ahead," Edano told reporters as he assessed the situation at the plant in a briefing Sunday.

There's a long way to go before the plant is under control, much less to the point where it can be buried under sand and concrete, much less to the point where the plant is salvageable in any fashion.  But finally people are making progress and the immediate danger is under control...for now.

But how much radiation has been released, and will continue to be released over the next several days and weeks, if not months?  It's a grim situation even without the earthquake and tsunami ravaged country being critically short on basics.  The missing/dead numbers have topped 20,000 total at this point in northern Japan, and the situation is getting worse by the hour as Japan is a country that relies heavily on imports for food and other staples.  Any damage to infrastructure, transport, power and production capabilities means there's no slack to absorb the disruption shock.

The country will continue to reel for quite some time.

All Oiled Up, Bend Over...Again

It's baaaaaack!

The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating reports of a potentially massive oil sheen about 20 miles north of the site of last April's Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion.

A helicopter crew and pollution investigators have been dispatched to Main Pass Block 41 in response to two calls to the National Response Center, the federal point of contact for reporting oil and chemical spills, said Paul Barnard, an operations controller for Coast Guard Sector New Orleans.

The first caller, around 11 a.m., described a sheen of about a half-mile long and a half-mile wide, he said.
About two hours later, another caller reported a much larger sheen -- about 100 miles long -- originating in the same area and spreading west to Cocodrie on Terrebonne Bay, Barnard said.

"We haven't been able to verify that, and it would be very unlikely for an individual to be able to observe a 100-mile long sheen," he said, adding inspection teams were en route around 3 p.m. to the site.

Eileen Angelico of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which oversees offshore oil and natural gas production, said late Saturday afternoon that her agency was awaiting Coast Guard confirmation of the nature of the sheen. The bureau had not received word from any operators in the gulf of a spill, she said.

What, you thought just because this was out of the news that this problem was solved too?  If this turns out to be more leakage from the Deepwater Horizon site or even an all new oil spill right now, all hell is going to break loose on Monday in the markets.  A 100-mile swath of oil isn't something you can just hide, folks.

This year just keeps getting better.  I'm really hoping this is nothing more than some sort of algae or silt or something not oil, otherwise all these crises are really getting exhausting.

Meanwhile In Port-au-Prince...

Haiti goes to the polls today to select a President as the country is still dealing with the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake.

Haitians will choose between a former first lady and a popular musician Sunday in a pivotal presidential runoff vote for a nation still recovering from a devastating earthquake and political turmoil.


Former law professor and first lady Mirlande Manigat will face singer Michel Martelly in the second round of presidential elections.

Final results of the runoff will be released on April 16, according to officials.

Martelly made a name for himself as a flamboyant carnival musician who sometimes ripped his clothes off onstage.

In early December, the electoral council announced that Manigat had won but lacked the majority of votes needed for an outright victory. Initial results put her in a runoff with government-backed candidate, Jude Celestin.

Haitians responded by charging fraud and burning cars, tires and Celestin's campaign headquarters in Port-au-Prince.

The third-place candidate, Martelly, claimed he had won more votes than Celestin and a review of results by an Organization of American States team supported that contention.

The review suggested that Martelly earned a spot in the runoff.

Oh yes, and former President Aristide is floating around the country too, showing up just days before the runoff, swearing he's not going to get back into politics, either...but I'm sure he'll offer his services as an advisor to Sunday's winner, too.

Meanwhile Haiti continues to languish in squalor as thousands face a massive cholera epidemic that could end up infecting some 750,000 plus people this year...almost ten percent of the population of the country infected by a preventable disease.  Nobody seems to care much, either...and if they do, they're certainly not doing very much about it.