My apologies for the somewhat skimpy postings these past couple of weeks; I've been trying to figure out how to fit daytime grad school classes into a fulltime day job - a task worthy of those old analytic reasoning questions that used to be on the GRE (I hated them, when I first took the test 20 some years ago; now I buy magazines full of them for entertainment -- and they're no longer on the test?!). Anyway, I'm embarking on a masters program in environmental ethics. Time will undoubtedly get even tighter, but it will get settled and predictable.

Speaking of ethics, or the glaring absence of them --
Ralph Reed, founder of the Christian Coalition, has found a way to earn millions of dollars from organized gambling while still proclaiming his moral opposition to it. How? He helps to prevent some Indian tribes from opening casinos, taking payments from lobbyists for the competing tribes (who are, of course, trying to open - or limit competition for - their own casinos) - for his "consulting" work.

And the same conservative "journalist" who told us all what Valerie Plame does for a living --
Has been defending and promoting "Unfit for Command" - the Swift Boat Liars' book, without mentioning that his son published it. "I don't think it's relevant," he says. Nope; it just amounts to pages and airwaves of free publicity for the book and the publisher.

Call me a nattering nabob of negativism --
But does anyone really think Bush cares that the leader of the Log Cabin Republicans might withhold his endorsement of the president? (That reminds me of another Bush flip-flop: he initially refused to meet with LCR during his 2000 campaign, then decided it would be OK... sort of.)

Every time you think the Republican party can't possibly find a lower, slimier road --
they prove you wrong. Leading the intrepid pack of mud burrowers this week: Dennis Hastert suggesting that George Soros got his money from drug dealing.

Pandering to swing voters --
In Robert Reich's Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America (which does not really present a basis for the grand vision suggested by the subtitle, but perhaps I'll get back to that later), he writes (pg 199) "If I hear another pundit say the real action is with the 20 percent upscale suburban 'swing' in the middle who have no strong political commitments, I'm going to scream." With upwards of 90% of the electorate already "decided," and virtually evenly split between Kerry and Bush, the election - which Arianna Huffington calls "nothing less than a referendum on the soul of our country" - could turn on the whims of the least politically committed individuals. And as Arianna says:

The problem is, this fixation with all things undecided is threatening to turn a campaign that should be about big ideas, big decisions and the very, very big differences between the worldviews of John Kerry and George Bush into a narrow trench war fought over ludicrous charges.

As a group, undecided voters long to be soothed and reassured. And the danger in playing to this fickle crowd is that the message is tailored not to offend rather than to challenge and inspire.

Timing is everything --
The FBI says the disclosure of their case against Lawrence Franklin has jeopardized their investigation. Juan Cole says that's exactly what the Pentagon intended. He has other good background here.

Why Bush Can't Run On His Record, continued --
Daily Kos has the details encapsulated. Let's see -- fewer jobs, lower median household incomes, higher poverty, and more Americans without health insurance. How's that War On Terror coming along?

Here's a good piece by Jane Brody on children and guns; she sites a study that found gun owners with children at home were less likely to keep guns locked than were gun owners with no children! That just leaves me speechless.

And just in time to commemorate Bush's planned cave-in to the NRA on the expiring Assault Weapons Ban ---
A friend in NY asked me to pass along this New Yorkers Against Gun Violence Media Advisory:

“President Bush is Out to Lunch” Press Conference

30,000 Americans Die from Guns Each Year and Bush is Reneging on Pledge to Renew Assault Weapons Ban

Republican National Convention Protest Photo Opportunity: SEPT 1ST*

WHAT: A rare National Press Conference with President Bush. As is typically the case, there will be obfuscation and no real answers provided to questions regarding the safety of all Americans and New Yorkers in particular given the Al Qaeda threat. Terrorists, mass murderers and other criminals know that America provides cheap and easy access to assault weapons. Bush will make it even easier to acquire these guns by allowing the assault weapons ban to expire on September 13th. These issues will be raised during a mock press conference with five eight foot tall Bush puppets (often contradicting one another) hosted by New Yorkers Against Gun Violence (NYAGV). In addition, the event will include a number of different speakers throughout the program.

WHERE: Washington Square Park (Manhattan) Teen Plaza (between fountain & Garibaldi Statue)

WHEN: Wednesday, September 1, 2004, 11:30am – 3:00pm (Press conferences to be held at 12 noon, 1pm & 2pm)

WHO: President Bush (five puppets); Gun Violence Survivors; Dr. Sheldon Teperman, Trauma Surgeon, Jacobi Medical Center; Andy Pelosi & Jackie Kuhls (Executive Director & public policy directors of NYAGV); Ellen Freudenheim, Co-Founder, The Silent March; Edie Smith, Pres., NY State Council, Million Mom March; Carole Stiller, Pres., NJ State Council, Million Mom March

WHY: The Bush administration has squandered lives by not addressing a major public health crisis. 30,000 Americans die at the end of a gun each year. Instead of tackling or even acknowledging the problem, Bush and the Republican Congress are making it worse by allowing the federal assault weapons ban to expire on September 13th, rather than working to renew and strengthening the ban. One in five law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty between 1998 – 2001 was killed with an assault weapon. Some of America’s most heinous recent crimes such as the Washington DC sniper murders and the Columbine High School massacre were committed with assault weapons.

VISUALS: Five 8-foot puppets resembling President Bush sitting around a dinner table – out to lunch. Posters displaying assault weapons.

*Individual photo opportunities can be arranged before Sept. 1st by contacting Andy Pelosi.

Friday smattering --

(1) Bush's brain (no, not this one*) is the subject of this Howell Gaines piece, which begins:

POCONO SUMMIT, Pa. -- It was here in the parking lot of Cramer's Home Center, less than seven miles from a NASCAR track, in a pivotal battleground state, on the back of a battered work van, that we saw the first one.

"Somewhere in Texas," the bumper sticker said, "A Village Is Missing Its Idiot." The next showed up at the Home Depot on the back of an equally battered pickup driven by s tough-looking kid dressed for construction work. It said: "Bush," and then, "Like a Rock Only Dumber."

These are signs of the fierce conviction of some voters -- and the secret fear of a quieter and perhaps larger group -- that George W. Bush is not smart enough to continue as president. Indeed, if an unscientific survey of bumper stickers, graffiti and letters to the editor in this conservative mountain region is an indicator, doubts are spreading.

Read more. (*Update: link fixed)

(2) "I understand how Senator Kerry feels - I've been attacked by 527's too" Bush tells the Times. Someone help him with this, please. There's a world of difference between "attacking" with the irrefutable facts of an administration's dubious accomplishments (Moveon.org ads) and attacking with outright fabrications (Swift Boat Veterans for Slander and Deception ad). One (Moveon.org ads) is "negative" advertising, the other (SBVSD [sic]) is a smear. This is pretty nuanced, I guess.

(3) Make of it what you will: a story in Intervention magazine says:

The report last week from the small Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper is jarring. A “flood of middle-eastern males” has been caught entering the country illegally east of Douglas, Arizona, according to the paper, and this recent “flood” is actually part of an increasing trend of “OTMs” (“other than Mexicans”) entering the country illegally somewhere east of the Chiricahua Mountains.

Read the rest. I wonder what, if anything, it has to do with the "sweeping new powers" given border patrol agents earlier this month (I blogged that earlier).

Seeking an even lower road --
Bob Dole went on Scarborough Country yesterday. He found it and took it. Truly pathetic. (He clearly didn't read the stories in the Times or the Post, which he sites as evidence of liberal bias against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (sic).) Here's a telling editorial by Noel Koch who tries gamely to convince us that Bob Dole once had a sense of decency. As Josh Marshall says, "Bush sullies everyone around him." But I don't think he had to work very hard with Dole.

Late Night Humor --
Perhaps you've seen these, since it's currently making the email rounds (Thanks, A):

A new poll says that if the election were held today, John Kerry would beat President Bush by a double digit margin. The White House is so worried about this, they're now thinking of moving up the capture of Osama Bin Laden to next month." -- Jay Leno

President Bush has unveiled his first campaign commercial, highlighting all of his accomplishments in office. That's why it's a 10-second spot." -- Jay Leno

"President Bush says he has just one question for the American voter 'Is the rich person you're working for better off now than they were four years ago?'" -- Jay Leno

"There was a scare in Washington when a man climbed over the White House wall and was arrested. This marks the first time a person has gotten into The White House unlawfully since President Bush." -- David Letterman

"The White House is now backtracking from its prediction that 2 million new jobs will be created in the U.S. this year. They say they were off by roughly 2.6 million jobs." -- Jay Leno

"In Louisiana, President Bush met with over 15,000 National Guard troops. Here's the weird part, nobody remembers seeing him there." -- Craig Kilborn

"President Bush said he was 'troubled' by gay people getting married in San Francisco. He said on important issues like this the people should make the decision, not judges. Unless of course we're choosing a president, then he prefers judges." -- Jay Leno

"This week, John Kerry was making campaign appearance with the guys whose lives he saved in Vietnam. Meanwhile, President Bush is campaigning with a guy that once took a math test for him." -- Conan O'Brien

"President Bush released his new $2.4 trillion federal budget. It has two parts: smoke and mirrors." -- Jay Leno

"Bush admitted that his pre-war intelligence wasn't what it should have been. We knew that when we elected him!" -- Jay Leno

"President Bush said that American workers will need new skills to get the new jobs in the 21st century. Some of the skills they're going to need are Spanish, Chinese, and Korean, because that's where the jobs went." -- Jay Leno

"The new Prime Minister of Spain has called the war in Iraq a disaster, and plans to bring his troops home as soon as possible. In fact, President Bush is so upset at Spain that he is now threatening to close down the border between Spain and the US." -- Jay Leno

Stuff that probably didn't make it into Bush/Cheney 04 campaign literature --
A Failed Presidency (the Nation, Sept. 13, 2004)
An Attack on Democracy (Dr. Robert Abele, Yubanet.com)
Missions Accomplished? Lowlights of the Bush Administration (Craig Aaron, Dissent Magazine, Summer 2004) (I've linked to this one before)

A very sad fact here.

Let them eat cake --
This is shameful:

"The number of people living in poverty rose by 1.3 million to 35.9 million people, or 12.5 percent of the population, up from 12.1 percent in 2002.

The rise was more dramatic for children. There were 12.9 million living in poverty last year, or 17.6 percent of the under-18 population. That was an increase of about 800,000 from 2002, when 16.7 percent of all children were in poverty."

Maybe Bush could consult the teachings of his favorite philosopher, who had quite a few words on the subject. (This is kinda funny: "Bush seeks new favorite philosopher")

Bushies admit one more eensy teensy tiny connection between the Administration and Swift Boat Veterans for Slander and Deception --
Bush campaign advisor Kenneth Cordier was fired last weekend, and now the Bush campaign's top outside lawyer Benjamin Ginsberg resigns.

"Yet more proof" --
As if to demonstrate the LA Times' contention that media coverage of the SVBT ad controversy is conservatively biased: this story on MSNBC, when I first saw it this morning, was headlined "Yet More Proof" of Kerry's side of the story. Now the headline reads, "Navy records appear to support Kerry's version."

If you need a little laugh --
Don't miss Charles Pierce on "start value" of George Bush's presidential "routine."

Fun video (Part 1) --
Sojourners has produced a fun video spoofing the Religious Right's insistence that God is a Republican. Help them put their "God is not a Republican" ad in the NYT!

Dick Cheney exhibits a momentary flicker of humanity --
Ever so briefly parting ways with the president:

"[My wife] Lynne and I have a gay daughter, so it's an issue our family is very familiar with," Mr Cheney said. "With respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone ... people ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to," he added.

But before you take his picture off your dartboard, reflect upon his more characteristic habits and traits.

Fun video (Part 2) --
See Bush get fired.

Some good northern California environmental news. A Bush judicial appointee actually ruled against the administration and invalidated a timber sale that would have slashed into "one of the two largest, unfragmented groves of old-growth forest in the Tahoe National Forest." The area, Duncan Canyon in Tahoe, would be protected under a bill introduced last year by Senator Boxer (the California Wild Heritage Act, S.1555), but the bill - surprise, surprise - doesn't appear to be moving.

Ooo, a delectable "turnabout is fair play"-type Swift Boat retort from the paper once known as McNews! (via Truthout) (How's this for insuring message discipline: "Since February, the White House has banned all Guard and military commanders outside the Pentagon from commenting on Bush's records or service. Requests for information must go to the Pentagon's Freedom of Information Act office.")

Speaking of cowardice --
Josh Marshall has choice and elegant words on the president's character issues:

"The real issue isn't physical bravery but moral cowardice. President Bush is an examplar of that quality in spades. And it cuts directly to his failures as president. Forget about thirty years ago, just think about the last three years.
[...]
The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face, those are the same qualities that led the president to lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when the bill started to come due.

That's the argument John Kerry needs to be making. And he needs to make it right now."

(It's worth reading his whole entry.)

I have never liked Bob Dole --
Not even his cuddly new Diet Pepsi-shilling, Brittany-lusting, Viagra-touting, self-effacing, wise-cracking late night TV persona. Somehow, New Bob never really disguised Ineffectual, Mean-Spirited Obstructionist Old Bob - the bitter war hero who went to Washington to block progressive reforms at every turn without ever, ever offering constructive alternatives. So I part with Matt Yglesias on that introductory point in this column, but couldn't agree more with the rest of it.

For an encore --
The White House line is that the president will unveil his shiny new second term agenda at the Convention. Until then, it's all a closely guarded secret. Could it be that he's still trying to figure out what to do with the next four years, in the unthinkable event that he is either legitimately elected or rigged into office? Recall that he was deeply mired and uninspired in his first year, doing nothing but taking vacations until September 11. September 11 gave him an agenda, all right -- a gift-wrapped opportunity to undermine or eliminate all those pesky aspects of democracy that bother Republicans so. But now, even conservatives are getting nervous about the deafening silence from the Bushies. Golly... what do we think George W. Bush will do with a second term in office? If you didn't read Robert Reich's thoughts on the second term agenda when I linked to his article last April, by all means, read the piece now.

OK, I'm just plain tired of the lame Swift Boat analyses -
especially those that pretend both "sides" of the story have merit. But I am delighted to see how "swiftly" Joshua Marshall dispenses with Bob Dole's sorry appearances this weekend. Think anybody in the news business will care to pick up on these discrepancies and hypocrisies? Doubt it.

Remind me: what were Cheney and Bush doing when Kerry was on that Swift Boat? --
Oh, now I remember... So does the typically above-the-fray Middle East Historian Juan Cole: "What was Bush doing with his youth? He was drinking. He was drinking like a fish, every night, into the wee hours. For decades. He gave no service to anyone, risked nothing, and did not even slack off efficiently." If you spend anytime on Juan Cole's site, you know he does not typically traffic in baseless internet rumor, so his speculations here are (not new, but) notable:

"The history of alcoholism and possibly other drug use is a key issue because it not only speaks to Bush's character as an addictive personality, but may tell us something about his erratic and alarming actions as president. His explosive temper probably provoked the disastrous siege of Fallujah last spring, killing 600 Iraqis, most of them women and children, in revenge for the deaths of 4 civilian mercenaries, one of them a South African. (Newsweek reported that Bush commanded his cabinet, "Let heads roll!") That temper is only one problem. Bush has a sadistic streak. He clearly enjoyed, as governor, watching executions. His delight in killing people became a campaign issue in 2000 when he seemed, in one debate, to enjoy the prospect of executing wrong-doers a little too much. He has clearly gone on enjoying killing people on a large scale in Iraq. Drug abuse can affect the ability of the person to feel deep emotions like empathy. Two decades of pickling his nervous system in various highly toxic substances have left Bush damaged goods. Even for those who later abstain, "visual-spatial abilities, abstraction, problem solving, and short-term memory, are the slowest to recover." That he managed to get on the wagon (though with that pretzel incident, you wonder how firmly) is laudable. But he suffers the severe effects of the aftermath, and we are all suffering along with him now, since he is the most powerful man in the world."

Another gem from Josh Marshall --
Reminding us of Karl Rove's intellectual and philosophical mentor.

FBI: Waging the War on Domestic Protestors --Jeff Cohen agrees with me that tracking protestors is a ridiculous use of apparently limited resources (ok, we probably arrived at the insight independently).

Oh, come on! --
Are journalists and headline writers this stupid? Deliberately obtuse? Or deliberately playing along with the Bushies? Headlines like this - and the oodles like it - serve a very specific purpose: To get the folks who don't read all those little words under the headline to believe that Bush was a mensch and condemned the ads. Bush did not specifically call for an end to the Swift Boat ad! -- he called for an end to 527-financed "attack ads"! He said -- apparently forgetting how many 527s are supporting him -- that all such ads should stop, and claimed - confirming long-held suspicions that he reads nothing, least of all those long bills he signs -- that he thought the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform bill stopped them. He said, "I think they're bad for the system." No, what's bad for the system are the blatant lies; educational ads, ads that accurately reflect a candidate's record, for better or worse, are good for the system. Ads that -- oh, say -- pluck a phrase out of the middle of a lengthy quote so that it no longer means what the speaker intended are bad for the system. Republican tactics in general are bad for the system. But Bush -- with his aversion to free speech, full disclosure, and veracity -- is really, really bad for the system. Atrios has some useful exercises for make-believe journalists to try.

No comment needed --
"The Bushites are using federal, state and local police to conduct an undeclared war against dissent, literally incarcerating Americans who publicly express their disagreements with him and his policies." Read the rest of Jim Hightower here.

Looking for terrorists in all the wrong places --
The FBI has their priorities in order: they're fanning across the country, looking for people who might be planning protests at the Republican National Convention. SFGATE has more today.

Why Bush can't run on his record --
This is fabulous, Missions Accomplished: Lowlights of the Bush Administration, by Craig Aaron. Dubious "achievements" of the Bushies for every single month of this (hopefully) 4-year descent into autocracy. Read it and weep.

Staying on message --
Yes, I know this White House is known for its "on-message discipline," but there can't be anyone better than Scott McClellan. Frankly, he strikes me as not terribly sharp - which may be why he's so good at repeating the same words over and over. But today's press "gaggle" (via Josh Marshall) shows Scotty at his robotic best, refusing to condemn the Swift Boat Smear campaign. (How many times has he used the word "shadowy" this week alone?) The White House continues to claim no involvement, despite increasingly overwhelming evidence that they are absolutely in on it. Meanwhile, Kerry has launched new ads and filed suit.

Let's end on a good note --
Celebrating this very classy move by the Boy Wonder, Michael Phelps.

Across the pond --
Andrew Gumbel reflects on American moral hypocrisy in an essay that is, by turns, funny, embarrassing, and spot on:

It has been impossible to ponder the issue of public morality in America these past few months without wondering whether we aren't living in weird parallel universes. In the first, 2004 has been the year in which the United States was caught torturing prisoners in Iraq, was accused of lying about weapons of mass destruction, and was deemed to be violating the US constitution and international law by holding so-called "enemy combatants" indefinitely without trial.

In the second universe, none of these matters one jot: not as moral issues, anyway. In this universe - the province of cable television, talk radio and the strangely hermetic corridors of power in Washington - there has been only one noteworthy moral outrage in 2004, one thing to offend the consciences of decent citizens and make them despair of the nation's moral fibre.

We are talking, of course, of Janet Jackson's prime-time breast exposure during the Super Bowl...

[...]

Is it really plausible that America has been washed by a spontaneous wave of puritan righteousness, or is something trickier going on? Jackson's real misfortune may not have been what she called a "wardrobe malfunction" so much as the fact that it occurred at the start of the most contentious election year in memory.

From the start, she suspected that the outrage vented against her was deliberately manufactured - by the Republican Party and its more overt supporters in the media - as a distraction from the very damaging news then coming in about Iraq's clear lack of weapons of mass destruction. That week, President George Bush's own weapons inspector, David Kay, had reported back that the Iraqi cupboard of chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities was entirely bare. While the Janet débâcle was in full swing, the President took advantage of the breast chatter to announce a politically uncomfortable Congressional investigation into the uses and possible misuses of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Since then, Janet and all she implies have continued to be a convenient distraction from weightier issues. On the one hand, the Republicans can play into the cultural and moral divide their supporters denote by the shorthand word "values". On the eve of last month's Democratic National Convention in Boston, pro-Bush protesters held up a sign at a John Kerry campaign stop in Ohio reading: "Who shares your values?" - alongside pictures of Monica Lewinsky, Howard Stern, Whoopi Goldberg (who made genitalia jokes about the President at a fundraiser) and the outspokenly anti-Bush comedian and writer Al Franken.

The implication couldn't be more clear: America is battling to save its moral soul against a Sodom and Gomorrah of godless Hollywood garishness. In this world, Bill Clinton is an irredeemable sinner and John Kerry is - worse still - French. As long as the political debate is consumed by such nonsense, the chances of Iraq, or the budget deficit, or the lack of affordable healthcare, becoming the topic of the moment are considerably diminished.

If you can spend next Wednesday's lunch hour in downtown San Francisco, try to be here:

Sudan Day of Conscience

12-1, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2004
CIVIC CENTER PLAZA (ACROSS FROM CITY HALL)
San Francisco

The United Religions Initiative, San Francisco Interfaith Council, and Jewish Community Relations Council in partnership with community, ethnic and civic groups invite you to join

AN INTERFAITH VIGIL TO CALL ATTENTION TO THE HUMAN TRAGEDY UNFOLDING IN DARFUR. JOIN LEADERS OF ALL FAITHS AND ETHNIC COMMUNITIES TO CALL FOR AN END TO THIS ATROCITY AND TO ENGAGE THE BAY AREA IN HELPING BRING CRITICALLY NEEDED RELIEF!

The Save Darfur Coalition, composed of faith-based, humanitarian and secular civic organizations, has identified Wednesday, August 25, 2004 as Sudan: Day of Conscience. On that day, communities across North America are urged to engage in interfaith activities -- designed to raise public awareness about the horrific situation in Darfur and to urge the international community to take immediate and decisive action to stop the killing, the rape, and the destruction of villages, and to assure that humanitarian relief reaches all those in need as quickly as possible.

Being in the business of driving up your own health care costs --
is a tough place to be. But Philip Morris was up to the challenge. According to the August 2004 issue of American Journal of Public Health (I have access to a departmental subscription at work), from 1996 to 1998, Philip Morris collaborated with its health care provider, CIGNA, to "censor accurate information on the harm of smoking and on environmental tobacco smoke exposure from CIGNA health newsletters sent to employees of Philip Morris and its affiliates." The agreement came to light after Blue Cross/Blue Shield and the state of Minnesota sued the tobacco industry and won access to business documents in the settlement. "The arrangement between Philip Morris and CIGNA involved the active participation of employees from both the tobacco company and the health insurer," the authors write. Employees of the Philip Morris benefits department would review each issue of CIGNA's Well-Being newsletter for "objectionable" material. If a "problem" was discovered, the tobacco company had a choice of (1) blocking delivery of the newsletter altogether or (2) replacing the article with alternate content. Sometimes CIGNA employees alerted Philip Morris employees to potentially objectionable content, as in this quoted communication: "Please take a look at page 7, the asthma piece. It mentions cigarette smoking as a possible trigger for an attack, I thought I should bring that to your attention." Other times, Philip Morris employees would raise the objection: "It contains some objectionable content referencing smoking. Specifically, the article lists 'cigarette smoking' as one of the irritants in the environment which can trigger an asthma attack. The article goes on to say 'Do not allow smoking in your home or any other environment that you can control.'... It is my recommendation that we forego the winter edition due to content..." The astonishing agreement to censor smoking-related content apparently ended in 1999, as a result of the aforementioned settlement. I am not at all surprised that Philip Morris did this, but for their health insurance carrier to collaborate! -- boggles the mind. As the authors note:

While this arrangement no longer exists, the potential for similar arrangements involving other industries is a matter of concern. Have paint manufacturers asked for censorship on the hazards of lead paint? Have gun makers asked that their employees not read about statistics on gun-related violence?

Obviously this list could be extended... pesticide manufacturers, HRT manufacturers, etc. The authors' wise recommendation is that those agencies that accredit managed care companies "mandate that health plans not censor employee-directed health information at the request of employers."

Now, what were you saying about family values? --
Bush's wingnut Catholic advisor, Deal Hudson, resigns over a little sexual misconduct. The Revealer has more.

While the resolute president flip-flops on the assault weapons ban --
Both Nicholas Kristoff and the Newsday editorial page explain why it cannot be allowed to expire. While you're at it, look back at what Arianna wrote earlier this year: "...Bush is feigning support for the measure while effectively ensuring its demise. The reason is as simple as it is craven: It’s all about placating the NRA, which has promised to withhold its presidential endorsement until after the assault weapons ban has expired."

Parting shots --
from an outgoing Republican who thinks the war in Iraq was unjustified.

Mr. President, your base is leaking --
David Broder last week, George Will this week... With conservative friends like these, no wonder Bush is trying to look moderate.

"Nuance" trumps groupthink --
Good column by Fareed Zakaria on the practicality of Kerry's Iraq position compared to Bush's. I like what he pulls from a book by Larry Bossidy:

Bossidy has written a book titled "Execution," which is worth reading in this context. Almost every requirement he lays out was ignored by the Bush administration in its occupation of Iraq. One important example: "You cannot have an execution culture without robust dialogue -- one that brings reality to the surface through openness, candor and informality," Bossidy writes. "Robust dialogue starts when people go in with open minds. You cannot set realistic goals until you've debated the assumptions behind them."

Jerry Long is more pointed, stating that nuance beats delusion.

How chicken hawks campaign against veterans --
It's all here (I actually saw it here first, but was irritated by the smattering of orphaned punctuation marks.)

States are taking on global warming --
Interesting strategy. (And global warming might cause earthquakes?)

Just how effective has that slimey Swift Boat Ad been? --
Apparently it's working on undecided voters, which is a shame since it can be so easily refuted. WaPo has even more. Eric Alterman says something worth remembering:

"The people in the Bush administration are competent in only one thing: smearing their opponents and intimidating the media into passing along their falsehoods unedited. Now that John McCain, like Colin Powell before him, has sacrificed his leverage together with his reputation for honesty by running interference for this bunch, there will certainly be more—and worse—to come. The Kerry campaign had better find a way to deal with it for if the past two elections demonstrate anything it all, it’s that this works."

Kerry is finally hitting back.

Does the Iraqi soccer team endorse Bush? --
You would be excused for thinking so, given their prominence in campaign ads. But (via Daily Kos) the players have something to say about it:

Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has committed so many crimes."
[---]
"My problems are not with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"

Rumsfeld gets off easy, again --
OK, sure, it was more than a few bad apples, but nosiree, nobody in the administration authorized the torture of Iraqi prisoners.

John McCain, Sycophant --
I used to admire John McCain; he seemed to stick to his rather moderate and reasoned principles. I hoped John Kerry wasn't really courting him for a running mate, but I respected the guy. Now, everytime McCain stumps for Bush, he diminishes himself. What's up with this, anyway? Are the Bushies testing his VP appeal? Because, you know, Cheney might be in jail during the next four years, and stories like this don't help Condi's chances.

Remember bin Laden? --
I was following links about the expected October Surprise, leading to this item, about which a commenter said, "The capture of Bin Laden in late October will be our version of the Reichstag fire." Embarrassed that I did not immediately grasp the reference (I love history, but I don't remember it), I googled this. Ah! NOW I understand!

Well, somebody had to say it --
Sen. Tom Harkin takes issue with Cheney's "sensitive war" mockery: "When I hear this coming from Dick Cheney, who was a coward, who would not serve during the Vietnam War, it makes my blood boil," said Harkin. "He'll be tough, but he'll be tough with someone else's kid's blood."

Bush's War on The Enlightenment --
Last year I read a terrific Lewis Lapham column on Bush that included this spot-on characterization:

President Bush speaks for an earlier period in American history, from a pulpit in the Puritan forest before it received the gift of books. If his biographers can be trusted, we now have in the White House a president so secure in his belief that the course of human events rests in "the hand of a just and faithful God" that he counts his ignorance as a virtue and regards his lack of curiosity as a sign of moral strength.

That is the intellectual nature of the man currently dictating your nation's science policies. Actual scientists have protested mightily, to little avail. Bush stacks advisory committees with ideologues, rules by arbitrary regulation (because legislation would surely fail), and always, always favors business over humanity. The Washington Post has a three-part series very worth reading, which details this administration's assaults on OSHA and the EPA -- assaults which merely hogtie the agencies, but ultimately endanger our lives. Go here, here, and here. Coincidentally?, the New York Times has a feature on the same topic. Rep Henry Waxman has been on the case; check his web site from time to time to see what the administration is trying to undo and what you can do to fight.

Meanwhile, here is a great cartoon that encapsulates the situation nicely; I keep it taped up in my cubicle. (The site has an irritating feature to keep you from illegally reproducing the cartoon; when the big red "no copy" circle comes up, just move your mouse to the side so that you can see the cartoon again.)

Oh, and did you hear Laura Bush speaking out on stem cell research? If this was her idea, someone shoulda just said no:

But I know that embryonic stem cell research is very preliminary right now and the implication that cures for Alzheimer's are around the corner is just not right and it's really not fair to people who are watching a loved one suffer with this disease.

OK, see, the fact that the answers are not "around the corner" and that the research is "very preliminary" would be a very good reason to facilitate the research, rather than obstruct it. As Charles Pierce observed, "Where in hell is the President's Council On Bioethics? (Probably either bleeding people with leeches or booking tours to Lourdes.) I mean, would I ask Gregor Mendel where the biography section is?" Mrs. Bush was also upbraided here.

If we all expect it, is it still an October surprise? --
Here's a roundup of the most "popular" October surprise theories; here is the site where you can weigh in. With polls like this, and with the likes of David Broder suggesting that Bush will be a one-termer, you can almost hear the administration hoping for something that will "rally Americans around their president" or give them a reason to postpone elections...

Troubled Times --
I'm having a terrible time linking to the New York Times today; everytime I click on a story link, my browser freezes. If you're able to get through, this Bob Herbert piece is a chilling read -- Jeb is trying to intimidate elderly black voters, now.

And on the subject of October Surprises and Block the Vote! efforts, Molly Ivins says we could more profitably spend our time contemplating the truly diabolical feats the Bushies have already pulled off...

Kerry's tricky position on the Iraq War --
Is simplified here by Kevin Drumm and others. (If you suffer the same kinds of challenges as the leader of the free world, you'll find Bob Somersby's explanation particularly useful: "What is Kerry’s stand on Iraq? Readers, get ready for some real brain-work! Here goes: Kerry says Bush should have had the authority to go to war, but then went to war prematurely. Wow! Have you finished scratching your heads about all the nuance involved in that statement?")

Bush Love-Ins --
Bush is particularly effective campaigning among hand-picked crowds teeming with evangelicals and pre-screened questioners who submit loyalty oaths. If you read things like Left At The Altar, you're probably not invited...

Yes, clothes do apparently make the man --
WaPo's John Harris proves it in one of the most idiotic pieces of campaign reporting I've yet read. I mean, really. This is fluffier than anything by Jodi Wilgoren - who at least laces her stories with malevolent misinformation. The Daily Howler finds it ironic that a press that couldn't cut Gore any slack and in fact spent many pages mocking his clothing selections, seems smitten with Bush's "shirtsleeves."

Finally --
I'll have more to say, later, on an important series of articles running in the Washington Post. Stay tuned. (If you have any luck getting an article pulled up on the Times site, try to read the piece by Elizabeth Busmiller on those Bush Love-Ins.)

More fallout --
on the administration's decision to blow its own horn and thus blow the cover of the most richly connected Al Qaeda suspect yet detained.

The sensitive men of the Bush White House --
The Progress Report has a fabulous rebuttal to Cheney for mocking Kerry's "sensitive war" comment. Unfortunately, the US press seems not to have the same investigative resources at its disposal as the small team of writers at TPR, because all we're hearing and reading in the "liberal media" is Cheney's mockery -- nothing of these (all from TPR):

PRESIDENT BUSH STRESSES NEED TO BE "SENSITIVE" IN MILTARY AFFAIRS: On 3/4/01, President Bush stressed the need to be "sensitive" in conducting military affairs, stating, "because America is powerful, we must be sensitive about expressing our power and influence." And just last week, President Bush said, "In terms of the balance between running down intelligence and bringing people to justice obviously is -- we need to be very sensitive on that."

SPECIAL FORCES STATE NEED TO FIGHT "SENSITIVE WAR ON TERRORISM": The Bush campaign's latest salvo, while aimed at Kerry, also is an attack on the military's top special forces commanders. On 7/20/04, the Bush administration sent one of the Air Force's top special forces officers to Capitol Hill to assuage concerns about tactics being used in the War on Terror. In his testimony, Chief Master Sgt. Robert Martens reassured Republican Chairman Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ) that "our special operators offer a seasoned, culturally sensitive war on terrorism."

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY SAYS MILITARY MUST NOT BE INSENSITIVE: On 4/13/04, Cheney said the Bush administration was focused on conducting sensitive military operations. He stated, "We recognize that the presence of U.S. forces can in some cases present a burden on the local community. We're not insensitive to that. We work almost on a continual basis with the local officials to remove points of friction and reduce the extent to which problems arise in terms of those relationships."

RUMSFELD STRESSES NEED TO BE "SENSITIVE" IN THE WAR: In the lead up to the Iraq war and afterwards, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld promised the Pentagon would be "sensitive." On 2/5/03, he said "we have to be sensitive, to the extent the world thinks the United States is focused on the problems in Iraq, it's conceivable that someone could make a mistake and believe that that's an opportunity for them to take an action which they otherwise would have avoided." On 7/9/03, he reassured the public that his department was being "sensitive" to troop needs during the war. He said U.S. commanders are "sensitive to the importance of troops knowing what the rotation plan will be so they have some degree of certainty in their lives. And [they] are sensitive to the importance of the quality of their lives."

GEN. RICHARD MYERS SAYS MILITARY NEEDS TO BE "SENSITIVE" IN WAR: On 10/31/01, Gen. Richard Myers, Bush's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked about whether the military would be "sensitive" to religious issues in prosecuting the War on Terror. He said "We are, I think, very culturally sensitive." On 1/7/03, Myers touted the Army's ability to be "sensitive." He said "we can ask of our troops to go out there and be, on the one hand, very sensitive to cultural issues, on the other hand, be ready to respond in self-defense to a very ticklish situation, all at the same time." On 11/19/03, Myers said U.S. troops "are very sensitive to the balance between appropriate military action and not trying to turn the average Iraqi against the coalition."

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS SAID THE WHITE HOUSE MADE SURE TO BE "SENSITIVE": On 7/10/03, Gen. Tommy Franks went to Capitol Hill to answer questions about the War on Terror. He said the Bush administration explicitly understood the "sensitive" need for the U.S. to continue pursuing al Qaeda in Afghanistan, instead of appearing like it was solely focused on Iraq. Franks said, "Everyone from the president to Secretary Rumsfeld right through me were very sensitive, to be sure, that our operations moved ahead in Afghanistan in parallel with what we were doing in Iraq."

ASHCROFT CLAIMS THE ADMINISTRATION IS BEING "SENSITIVE" IN WAR ON TERROR: Attorney General John Ashcroft has repeatedly stressed the need for the Bush administration to be "sensitive" in fighting the War on Terror. On 4/28/03, just a month after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Ashcroft said, "The United States is very sensitive about interfering in the internal politics of other countries." On 3/20/02, he said the Justice Department was making sure to be "sensitive" in hunting down terrorists. He said, "The agents and officers who conducted the interviews did so in a sensitive manner, showing full respect for the rights and dignity of the individuals being interviewed."

CHENEY & LOTT URGE MILITARY TO BE SENSITIVE IN CONDUCTING WAR: In conducting the first war in Iraq, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney repeatedly stressed the need for America to fight a "sensitive" war. On 9/11/90, Cheney told Congress that he "was very concerned about…the clash of cultures" brought on by U.S. troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia, and that the U.S. must "try to be sensitive." Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) concurred, saying, "I would agree to that. I think [the Saudis] are sensitive, but we also are sensitive."

CHENEY SAYS PENTAGON MUST BE "SENSITIVE" IN DEVELOPING WEAPONS: On 2/7/90, Cheney told Congress that the Pentagon must be "sensitive" in developing weapons. He said that he understood the need for the Pentagon to explore civilian uses of weapons-related technology, saying, "I think we need to be very sensitive to that as a department."

WOLFOWITZ SAYS MILITARY MUST BE "SENSITIVE" IN WAR ON TERROR: On 11/9/01, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a key hawk on military issues, said the armed forces must be "sensitive" to religious issues surrounding the War on Terror. He said, "I think we've made it clear we're going to be sensitive to the fact that Ramadan is the holiest month on the Muslim calendar and we will have that in mind."

Think Bush/Cheney's gun-ho (pun intended) base will hear any of that on Fox?

Speaking of frightening concentrations of arbitrary powers --
and of pandering to nationalist conservatives: Border patrol agents are going to be given "sweeping new powers to deport illegal aliens from the frontiers with Mexico and Canada without providing them the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge," according to this NYT story - which I missed but a sharp-eyed friend passed along. Get this:

The new rule will apply to illegal immigrants caught within 100 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders who have spent up to 14 days within the United States. Officials said the border agents would not focus on deporting Mexicans and Canadians, who will still, for the most part, have their cases heard in immigration court. The agents will concentrate instead on immigrants from other countries. In fiscal year 2003, about 37,000 immigrants from countries other than Mexico and Canada - primarily from Central America - were arrested along the Southwest border.

Can you say "racial profiling"?

Are you as shocked as I am? --
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the president's tax cuts favor the wealthy! Noooo! "Fully one-third of President Bush's tax cuts in the last three years have gone to people with the top 1 percent of income..." (See WaPo for a slightly more critical spin.)

PBS --
...continues to coddle radical conservatives by "balancing" its investigative journalism with exclusively right-wing commentary.

Isn't it a little late for all this? --
Now the Washington Post sort of apologizes for failing to practice journalism in the run-up to Bush's war on Iraq (although they can't help pointing out that they also showed "flashes of groundbreaking reporting"):

"The paper was not front-paging stuff," said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. "Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?"

Another shameless terror scare --
Al Qaeda really, really wants to affect the elections, um, somehow... (this will probably become more specific with additional polling)

Finally! --
I must be thought-broadcasting again. Matthew Yglesias spells out what's been bugging me for a long time about the David Brooks-inspired red state/blue state stereotypes (many of which have been completely debunked, but live on in a cherished fairy tale in the "liberal media") and finds a study to back me him up. Matthew writes:

Their analysis of 2000 Census data tells us what everyone knows but pretends to forget -- big cities are full of poor people. Around one quarter of the residents of America's 100 largest cities are in the lowest fifth of the national income distribution, while just 16.6 percent of city dwellers are in the top twenty percent. The top three quintiles are underrepresented in cities, while the bottom two are overrepresented. Cities like New York and Boston are, despite the presence of a highly visible, well-educated, wealthy elite, actually "low-moderate" income places where there are fewer people in the top fifth than in the next fifth, fewer in that fifth than in the middle fifth, fewer in the middle than in the next-to-bottom, and fewer there than in the poorest quintile.

It's not shocking stuff, when you think about it, but a useful corrective to a deplorable tendency among media-types to write as if everyone who lives in big cities is like them and their friends rather than like the folks who drive their cabs and clean their offices.

A useful corrective, indeed. It needs to be leapt upon as hard evidence of the classism and, yes, racism that is so deeply embedded in the conservative political platform and worldview. The bottom two quintiles of income distribution are overrepresented in Brooks' "coastal metro blue areas" and completely ignored by purveyors of his "heartland" myth.

Maybe Al Qaeda wants us to vote for Nader? --
A good roundup of thoughts on "pre-election terror plots" here.

George Bush showed his true colors early --
Here is an action photo of collegiate Bush sucker-punching a rugby opponent. (Actually, we could argue that his colors were shown even earlier.)

Why, you'd almost think they don't really want to win the war on terror --
after reading this.

The Leave No Pharmaceutical Corporation Behind Act --
is ticking off seniors.

But just in case you were thinking of importing cheaper drugs from Canada --
The administration devised a new and even more cynical scare tactic: FDA Commissioner Crawford says Al Qaeda may try to tamper with illegally imported prescription drugs! DAMN, these guys are good.

Molly Ivins --
Tries to explain to Canadians why even 45% of the US might vote for Bush, and finds she can't.

What happens in peoples' boardrooms is their own business --
I've just started reading Robert Reich's REASON: WHY LIBERALS WILL WIN THE BATTLE FOR AMERICA and, on the train this morning, came to his discussion about what Sen Daniel Moynihan called "defining deviancy down," leading to lower and lower expectations for good behavior, and how radical conservatives choose to apply this exclusively to sexual behavior when it's actually "our current condition with regard to the greed and financial corruption that now infects America" (radical conservatives, according to Reich, think fraudulent accounting, insider trading, tax evasion and the like should be private acts, while sex outside of marriage, homosexuality, abortion and divorce should be legislated). Perhaps this misplaced obsession explains why yet another story about Halliburton's burgeoning corruption, this one involving their inability to account for the staggering sum of 1.8 billion dollars allegedly spent in Iraq, is greeted with gaping yawns from the Right?

Big surprise --
Global demand for oil is even higher than anticipated, which means Cheney really was brilliantly prescient when he argued that we should invade Iraq and seize their oil fields.

Everything's under control --
“I know what I’m doing when it comes to winning this war..." Dubya, yesterday.

We're not turning the corner, afterall --
I was listening to CNN last night and heard a remarkably detailed report about BushCo's decision to stop using the phrase "turning the corner" in Bush's stump speeches because Dems are making too much hay with it. Yep, they're all over the language thing... Hard to believe that was a feature news story, but then again, issues are so hard to cover.

International Election Monitors --
Just spotted this good news via Tapped: the US will get international election monitors this fall.

Be afraid, be very afraid (please) --
Tom Engelhardt doesn't believe the administration can orchestrate an October Surprise, but he admits it's hard not to be suspicious:

...take the most recent Orange Alert, which came just after the Democratic Convention as Kerry was setting out on the campaign trail and was based on a series of arrests of al-Qaeda figures in Pakistan, the first of which, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the FBI's twenty-second "Most Wanted" terrorist, was announced on the day of Kerry's acceptance speech. To be more precise, it was announced by Faisal Saleh Hayyat, Pakistan's interior minister, at that top Pakistani hour for making crucial announcements – midnight (but acceptance speech day halfway across the world.). Actually, to be yet more accurate, the arrest itself had been made not that day but four days earlier. What's surprising here is not the four-day lag, but the speed with which the announcement was made – a kind of unseemly tip-off to any al-Qaeda figures connected to Ghailani. As former CIA operative Robert Baer commented on the timing of the announcement: "It makes no sense to make the announcement then. Presumably, everything [Al Qaeda] does is compartmented. By announcing to everybody in the world that we have this guy, and he is talking, you have to assume that you shoot tactics. To keep these guys off-balance, a lot of this stuff should be kept in secret. You get no benefit from announcing an arrest like this."

On the same topic, remember the TNR article I linked to a few weeks ago, predicting that Pakistani officials would announce the arrest of a high value Al Qaeda target during the Democratic National Convention? The same authors reflect on the implications of their prescience here. William Rivers Pitt also explores the curious timing of the terror alerts. Julius Civitatus provides a very handy graphic, correlating Bush's poll numbers to terror alerts. And Ray McGovern thinks we should still be concerned about attempts to cancel or postpone the elections:

...if the president’s numbers look no better in October than they do now, there will be particularly strong personal incentive on the part of the president, Rumsfeld, and Vice President Cheney to pull out all the stops in order to make four more years a sure thing. What seems increasingly clear is that putting off the election is under active consideration—a course more likely to be chosen to the extent it achieves status as just another option.

When did Liberal become a bad word? --
Kathy Pollitt reclaims liberal values in her Nation column. I'm not sure her "enlightened borough of Brooklyn" comment (contrasting it to "rural conservative states") is particularly helpful, but she nails it here:

We liberals and progressives and leftists have our own noble principles, our own beautiful abstract words. We should take our stand on them. Fairness is a liberal value. Equality is a liberal value. Education is a liberal value. Honesty in government, public service for modest remuneration, safeguarding public resources and the land--these are all values we share. Liberty is a liberal value, trusting people to make their own decisions, letting people speak their minds even if their views are unpopular. So is social solidarity, the belief that we should share the nation's enormous wealth so that everyone can live decently. The truth is, most of the good things about this country have been fought for by liberals (indeed, by leftists and, dare one say it, Communists)--women's rights, civil liberties, the end of legal segregation, freedom of religion, the social safety net, unions, workers' rights, consumer protection, international cooperation, resistance to corporate domination--and resisted by conservatives. If conservatives had carried the day, blacks would still be in the back of the bus, women would be barefoot and pregnant, medical care would be on a cash-only basis, there'd be mouse feet in your breakfast cereal and workers would still be sleeping next to their machines.

In an essay in the August Harper's (the essay is not available online), Marilynn Robinson writes about liberal fear of claiming the "liberal" label in "The Tyranny of Petty Coercion." Among some of the many eloquent statements she makes, she argues that "the banishment of the word 'liberal' was simultaneous with the collapse of liberalism itself..."

...To be shamed out of the use of a word is to make a more profound concession to opinion than is consistent with personal integrity. What is at stake? Our hope for a good community. Liberalism saw to the well-being of the vulnerable. Now that it has ebbed, the ranks of the vulnerable continuously swell. If this seems too great a claim to make for it, pick up a newspaper. Trivial failures of courage may seem minor enough in any particular instance, and yet they change history and society. They also change culture.

Shameless plug --
If you want to nominate Left At The Altar for the Washington Post's Best Blogs contest, go here ;-).

Please read this. 61 million votes, more than half of the votes expected this fall, will be counted by the computers of Election Systems and Software - one privately held company. Are you comfortable with that? Keep checking Black Box Voting and Working for Change to see how you can help ensure a fair election.

Wherever your treasure lies, there your heart will be --
The NYT religion reporter David Kirkpatrick, out watching with admiration as #43's conservative Christian foot soldiers jeopardize their tax-exempt status, missed a good sermon Sunday at #41's Kennebunkport church. The supply pastor implored the wealthy congregation to give up their material possessions (he probably won't be invited back). He must've been preaching on the same text I heard Sunday. #43 was at his daddy's church, too. (Someone could maybe tell him there's a lot more like this in all those pages between Leviticus and Revelations.)

Oil for food --
No, not the apparently criminal UN program, but the bigger picture -- what it costs the earth, in energy, to feed us. You really should read the whole article, but here are some sobering reflections:

Scientists have a name for the total amount of plant mass created by Earth in a given year, the total budget for life. They call it the planet's "primary productivity." There have been two efforts to figure out how that productivity is spent, one by a group at Stanford University, the other an independent accounting by the biologist Stuart Pimm. Both conclude that we humans, a single species among millions, consume about 40 percent of Earth's primary productivity, 40 percent of all there is. This simple number may explain why the current extinction rate is 1,000 times that which existed before human domination of the planet. We 6 billion have simply stolen the food, the rich among us a lot more than others.
[--]
The common assumption these days is that we muster our weapons to secure oil, not food. There's a little joke in this. Ever since we ran out of arable land, food is oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by at least a calorie of oil, more like ten. In 1940 the average farm in the United States produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. By 1974 (the last year in which anyone looked closely at this issue), that ratio was 1:1. And this understates the problem, because at the same time that there is more oil in our food there is less oil in our oil. A couple of generations ago we spent a lot less energy drilling, pumping, and distributing than we do now. In the 1940s we got about 100 barrels of oil back for every barrel of oil we spent getting it. Today each barrel invested in the process returns only ten, a calculation that no doubt fails to include the fuel burned by the Hummers and Blackhawks we use to maintain access to the oil in Iraq.

David Pimentel, an expert on food and energy at Cornell University, has estimated that if all of the world ate the way the United States eats, humanity would exhaust all known global fossil-fuel reserves in just over seven years. Pimentel has his detractors. Some have accused him of being off on other calculations by as much as 30 percent. Fine. Make it ten years.

I've been working through the ecological footprint calculations in Jim Merkel's Radical Simplicity: Small Footprints on a Finite Earth to measure my own footprint, and it's pretty sickening. (Here's an online eco-footprint calculator, if you're curious about your own.) As long as we're on the subject of perspective-taking, see where you rank among the wealthiest of the world (thanks, BB).

When is it OK to leak?
Apparently only when it makes the administration look like it's on top of the "war on terror" -- even if it actually weakens the "war on terror." But the administration trotted out Condi Rice yesterday to defend their honor and integrity (why do they do that? She invariably makes things worse) and insist that they most certainly did not leak the name of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan to the press and thus compromise on ongoing investigation. Joshua Marshall explains here why her explanation - that the name of the detainee was part of background information and was not intended to be printed - was just plain wrong. Background information can be used by journalists; only the identity of the speaker is withheld.

Big of them to admit it --
I know you've all heard or read this a million times, now. It's been all over my office since yesterday afternoon. But just in case you've been away from a television, radio or newspaper for awhile, Bush finally - accidentally - acknowledged what we've all known:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

There's a reason Freud was so keen to parse slips of the tongue.

Paradise Misunderstood --
Earlier this week, Nicholas Kristof had an editorial, "Martyrs, Virgins and Grapes" that got a fair amount of circulation and rumination (e.g. at the Revealer), in which Kristof explained that the paradise promised to Islamic martyrs is based on a faulty translation of the Koran. I'll leave it to my friend Sir Real to make more knowledgeable commentary, but I feel slightly ashamed at how uncritically I read Kristof, now that I've read Abhinav Aima:

The fault, Mr. Kristof, is not in their books, whether they be penned by Karl Marx or descended from the heavens. Men and women do not die by their thousands because of the promise of heavenly virgins, but because they believe they are on the right path. Because life is unbearable, and death is a release. Because suffering is unending and being on the other side of a gun barrel, even just for a moment, seems a blessing.

If your children would not embrace death for the promise of 72 virgins in heaven, then why assume the same of Muslim children? Because of their religion or your prejudices?

As many Muslims, radicals and otherwise, have told me: End their suffering and the violence shall also end. And the answer for that does not fit into a sound bite or a tidy Op-ed piece. Or an invasion disguised as a liberation.

Iraq? Never heard of it --
Paul Krugman picks up on Matthew Yglesias' concern that handover of pseudo-sovereignty served the administration's purpose of getting Iraq out of the headlines.

The Evil Genius of it! --
The Today Show news this morning was reporting on the controversy surrounding the disgusting attack ad sponsored by a wealthy Bush supporter - the one featuring Vietnam vets who weren't on Kerry's swift boat and yet apparently have firsthand knowledge that Kerry didn't earn his medals. Even John McCain blasted the ad, noting that it "was the same kind of deal that was pulled on me" during the 2000 primaries. Anyway, a Bushie apparently suggested that if Dems don't like the ad, they should join Republicans in prohibiting all independently sponsored ads (especially those MoveOn.org pieces that are proving so effective?). Meanwhile, one of the guys in that shameful ad has now retracted his statements - which are still, nonetheless, running unchallenged on televisions in key states all over the country.

How far we've come --
A radical fundamentalist group called Christians for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (I will not hyperlink that; you can google it if you must) pressured the magazine Christianity Today into retracting - and apologizing for running - an advertisement for a conference of the Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus, because the EEWC is a "radical feminist group" with "unbiblical" theology. OK... I don't really expect truly forward thinking from Christianity Today, either, but how pathetic.

Last night a painfully shy woman came to the door to ask for contributions to the Women's Choice Clinic in Oakland, CA. She looked absolutely miserable, could not maintain eye contact, and did not make a particularly articulate case for the fiscal crisis organizations like this one are facing under the advance of Bush's War on Women. But I believe in the cause, and I also know how hard it is to canvass for a living -- having tried it myself for about 2 and a half evenings -- so I wrote a check. The visit was particularly timely, since I'd just read an article in Prevention Magazine called "Access Denied" - about the growing numbers of doctors and pharmacists who are refusing to provide hormonal contraception on the grounds that it causes "silent abortions." Since (according to the Prevention article) 95% of American women use some form of birth control during their childbearing years, it's hard to imagine this trend spreading wildly without a fight. But that doesn't make it any less devastating for those women stuck with few other healthcare provider choices in parts of the country where one of these doctors or pharmacists has adopted this outrageous and untenable position. What kind of "science" is informing their medicine, anyway? As Molly Ivins has pithily observed, "approximately one fourth of all fertilized eggs are swept out on the menstrual tide before they even get near to implanting themselves in the uterine wall, and we do not hold funerals over Kotex or Tampax."

By the way, I started reading that new Molly Ivins collection, Who Let The Dogs In?, on the flight home yesterday. It's a retrospective (which she says makes her feel "slightly dead") of some of her columns about particularly memorable political figures and their foibles. The introduction includes this terrific little podium-pounder:

You have more political power than 99 percent of all the people who have ever lived on this planet. You can not only vote, you can register other people to vote, round up your friends, get out and do political education, talk to people, laugh with people, call the radio, write the paper, write your elected representative, use your e-mail list, put up signs, march, volunteer, and raise hell. All your life, no matter what else you do - butcher, baker, beggarman, thief/doctor, lawyer, Indian chief - you have another job, another responsibility: You are a citizen. It is an obligation that requires attention and effort. And on top of that, you should make it into a hell of a lot of fun.

Amen.

As usual, Krugman is worth reading. Too bad our "journalists" won't rise to the occasion.

I scanned headlines as I schlepped past newspaper vending machines in the airport this morning, and saw Bush's pursed lips and grave warnings that "we are a nation in danger," and saw the post-mortems about Kerry's missing post-convention bounce (which somehow seems to have stunned the press, even though many pundits said not to expect one, since so many voters are already decided. They must have really fallen for Matthew Dowd's clever nonsense predicting a virtually impossible bounce for Kerry -- clever because it meant that anything less than his prediction would look bad for Kerry). And I sat on my little pile of backpacks and reflected on the stupifying mystery of an American public that seems to be falling for yet another politically-timed Terror Alert -- the Republican grand finale for the Democratic Convention -- based on intelligence that officials now acknowledge was several years old. Why do they keep doing this? Because they can.

Oh, between terror alerts, expect many more arrests of "top al Qaeda officials" between now and November.

The Findlay Courier's editorial page editor, Cynthia Moorhead, wrote to me to say they won't publish my letter: "Sorry, but the letters column is limited to local residents – people who live within our circulation area – unless they are writing about a local issue." Yeah, right.

I missed almost every bit of the convention coverage while I was out of town. And much of the news. Now I'm getting caught up, and wondering why the exoneration of Sandy Berger (thanks, CW) wasn't on the front page of anything? I wouldn't expect the Courier to admit it, but the Times? The Post? I've searched their sites and googled and find nothing referring to the item buried in the Wall Street Journal (subscription only) on Friday:

Officials looking into the removal of classified documents from the National Archives by former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger say no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

On another note, I sure didn't need to know about this.

Here are some terrific bumperstickers.

I'm heading back to the left coast today, but wanted to share the first paragraphs of the headline story in today's Courier, "Kerry turns up heat in BG":

If Americans have grown apathetic about the democratic process, it couldn't be seen on Main Street, Bowling Green, on Sunday.

A crowd estimated at 8,000 or more stood shoulder-to-shoulder for two hours, braving the midday heat to wait for the arrival of Sen. John F. Kerry.

Hundreds more had to be turned away, according to organizers.

There's also an interesting story on page 3 about manure runoff from mega-dairy farms (where 22,600 cows produce 2.8 million pounds of manure a day; that's vivid, isn't it?) possibly contributing to the 6,300 square mile "dead zone" in Lake Erie -- "an oxygen-depleted area where fish cannot live." Geez.