I was dimly aware that our farm subsidy policies weren’t just economically inefficient, but bad for public health, too. But Neil Sinhababu brings the point home with a striking fact, namely that just 0.37 percent of farm subsidies go to fruits and vegetables. And here’s the factoid in graphic form:
This he mentions by way of pimping for John Edwards’ policy agenda for fighting hunger and malnutrition which certainly looks good to me.
Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) “raised some eyebrows” with his recent remarks about President Bush’s knowledge about Iraq. His comments “about his experiences with the White House during meetings on the war in Iraq” left some conservatives in the crowd “befuddled.” Chattanooga’s NewsChannel 9 reports:
“I was in the White House a number of times to talk about the issue, and I may rankle some in the room saying this, but I was very underwhelmed with what discussions took place at the White House,” Corker said.
A few minutes later during a question and answer session a man in the audience asked him to clarify his statement.
“I was concerned about your statement that you were underwhelmed with what was going on in the White House. Did you mean with him or with his staff?”
In response, Corker said, “Let me say this. George Bush is a very compassionate person. He’s a very good person. And a lot of people don’t see that in him, and there’s many people in this room who might disagree with that…. I just felt a little bit underwhelmed by our discussions, the complexity of them, the depth of them.”
In the Democratic Radio Address to be aired this Saturday, retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004, put his support behind legislation calling for combat operations in Iraq to be over by Dec. 15, 2008. Sanchez, who has been criticized over his handling of the Abu Ghraib scandal, said that the lack of political progress has not “matched” the “courage and blood of our troops” and that there is “no evidence” that reconciliation is possible:
“The improvements in security produced by the courage and blood of our troops have not been matched by a willingness on the part of Iraqi leaders to make the hard choices necessary to bring peace to their country,” Sanchez said in remarks to be aired Saturday for the weekly Democratic radio address.
“There is no evidence that the Iraqis will choose to do so in the near future or that we have an ability to force that result,” he said.
Sanchez added that the House bill “makes the proper preparation of our deploying troops a priority and requires the type of shift in their mission that will allow their numbers to be reduced substantially.”
In October, Sanchez said that in Iraq the United States is “living a nightmare with no end in sight.”
Earlier this week, Washington Post investigative reporters Bob Woodward and Jeff Leen hosted an online chat at washingtonpost.com. One of the participants asked Woodward and Leen how pervasive the voter suppression tactic known as “caging” is. The investigative reporters had no idea what it was:
Washington, D.C.: Don’t you have a duty to report criminal activity to the appropriate authorities?
How pervasive is “caging”?
Bob Woodward and Jeff Leen: We publish what we can find and document. Many times over the years government authorities have pursued the information we have dug up and launched their own investigations. But we’re trying to serve the readers, and we do not act as police or prosecutors. And please send us an e-mail explaing what “caging” is.
Woodward and Leen aren’t the only Washington Post reporters who are clueless about caging. In a washingtonpost.com online chat with congressional reporter Jonathan Weisman in May, a questioner asked “why Congress didn’t jump on Monica Goodling’s testimony about caging.” Weisman’s response: “So what is this caging thing?”
So for all those Washington Post reporters out there, let’s go over the facts again.
Caging most recently gained attention in the U.S. attorney scandal. In 2004, BBC News published a report showing that Tim Griffin, the former Rove protege who was placed as a U.S. attorney in Arkansas, led a “caging” scheme to suppress the votes of African-American servicemembers in Florida.
On Nov. 5, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced the Caging Prohibition Act, a bill to outlaw this “long-recognized voter suppression tactic which has often been used to target minority voters.” Bush administration officials have repeatedly tried to dismiss this as “direct-mail term.” But the charges are serious enough that earlier this year, several senators called for an investigation into the RNC’s use of this voter suppression tactic. Whitehouse and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) explained:
Caging is a voter suppression tactic whereby a political campaign sends mail marked “do not forward” to a targeted group of eligible voters. A more aggressive version involves sending mail to a targeted group of voters with instructions to sign and return an acknowledgment card. The campaign then creates a list of those whose mail was returned undelivered and challenges the right of those citizens to vote — on the ground that the voter does not live at the registered address.
Fill in Woodward and Leen on caging by contacting them here and here.
Last night on The Charlie Rose Show, former Bush political adviser Karl Rove claimed that he was “opposed” to holding the pre-war Iraq vote just ahead of the 2002 elections. “The administration was opposed to voting on it in the fall of 2002,” Rove said. He stated that his upcoming book will argue that the administration did not want to schedule an Iraq war vote prior to the 2002 elections:
ROSE: But you were opposed to the vote.
ROVE: It happened. We don’t determine when the Congress vote on things. The Congress does.
ROSE: You wish it hadn’t happened at that time. You would have preferred it did not happen at that time.
ROVE: That’s right.
Watch it:
Recall, the House and the Senate voted on whether to authorize war against Iraq in October 2002, just a few weeks prior to the 2002 elections.
Rove’s claim is utterly dishonest and flat-out false. In Sept. 2002, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) asked President Bush to delay the vote on the Iraq war:
“I asked directly if we could delay this so we could depoliticize it. I said: ‘Mr. President, I know this is urgent, but why the rush? Why do we have to do this now?’ He looked at Cheney and he looked at me, and there was a half-smile on his face. And he said: ‘We just have to do this now.’”
While some Democrats — particularly Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) — were arguing that it was “imperative” that Congress vote immediately to authorize war, had the White House wanted to delay the vote until after the 2002 elections, they would have found a great deal of support. Here’s what a few key leaders were saying at the time:
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL): “It would be a severe mistake for us to vote on Iraq with as little information as we have. This would be a rash and hasty decision.”
Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA): “I do not believe the decision should be made in the frenzy of an election year.”
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “I know of no information that the threat is so imminent from Iraq” that Congress cannot wait until January to vote on a resolution.
But Karl Rove and President Bush weren’t interested in delaying the vote. Rather, the administration actively politicized it. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “Delaying a vote in Congress would send the wrong message.” President Bush explicitly told Congress to “get the issue done as quickly as possible“:
My answer to the Congress is, they need to debate this issue and consult with us, and get the issue done as quickly as possible. It’s in our national interests that we do so. I don’t imagine Saddam Hussein sitting around, saying, gosh, I think I’m going to wait for some resolution.
On Sept. 11, 2002, administration officials briefed Congress on Iraq, with the goal of persuading them to schedule a vote to authorize military action. And the administration’s congressional allies were clear on why they wanted to rush the war vote. “People are going to want to know, before the elections, where their representatives stand,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-VA.), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “This could be the vote of the decade, so why wait?”
Transcript: Read more
It sure was nice of the President to put the fact that he doesn’t believe in democracy or constitutional government out in the pre-Thanksgiving news dump. Seriously, wtf is this about:
President Bush yesterday offered his strongest support of embattled Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying the general “hasn’t crossed the line” and “truly is somebody who believes in democracy.”
I can understand (though not, I think, agree with) deciding to ultimately take an “our S.O.B.” point of view on this. But that hardly commits us to embracing an up-is-down view of what it takes to be someone “who believes in democracy.” It should seem obvious that reacting to an adverse Supreme Court ruling by suspending the constitution, having the head justice fired and arrested, and then ordering mass arrests of political opponents and civil society leaders is not consistent with a “no line crossing” policy.
James Fallows honors Thanksgiving with a comprehensive debunking of the notion that the Bush administration’s decision to open military airspace in the northeast corridor this weekend is some kind of boon to NYC-area air travelers. In fact, as he points out, this changes nothing — restricted airspace was never the cause of any congestion, so opening it doesn’t solve anything. The New York Times‘s editorial page was, however, taken in, so I guess that’s mission accomplished for the White House.
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao told journalists Wednesday:
Wow!
That said, I think we have a right to be skeptical — given the Bush-like doubletalk from the Chinese foreign minister and especially given that Wen seems utterly unaware the first half of the commitment is utterly meaningless.
After all, China’s GDP growth in the last few years has been about 10% per year. If that growth is maintained, then GDP will rise over 60% in five years — which means energy use could rise 40% 29% (!) over thost 5 years, and China would still hit its target to reduce energy consumption by 20 percent (per unit of GDP). That would do nothing to “reduce carbon emissions.”
Let’s hope Wen doesn’t mean China will strive to keep carbon emissions (per unit of GDP) at 2005 levels.
If he does mean an absolute cap on China’s emissions, then this is stunning news and means a global deal is almost certainly possible — once we have a new President.
Related Posts
I imagine the bulk of the blog-reading audience will be congregating with their families today. I’m off to the grandparents’ house in Great Neck shortly. Enjoy your turkey, etc.
This Thanksgiving, progressives have a lot to be thankful for. Here’s our list:
We’re thankful for our country’s troops.
We’re thankful the minimum wage has been increased for the first time in a decade.
We’re thankful MC Rove has more free time to work on his dance moves.
We’re thankful Congress has “wasted time” trying to end the war in Iraq.
We’re thankful radio stations don’t play “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.”
We’re thankful for journalists like Molly Ivins, who was never afraid to “raise hell.”
We’re (not) thankful for wide stances.
We’re thankful to Michael Moore, whose documentary SiCKO started a national discussion on health care reform.
We’re thankful people don’t call us Buzzy, Cookie, Brownie, or Scooter.
We’re thankful we can now call Al Gore the “Oscar-winning, Emmy-winning, Nobel Prize laureate” former vice president of the United States.
We’re thankful Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales won’t visit our bedside if we’re
sick in the hospital.
We’re thankful not all Dick Cheney’s cousins think like he does.
We’re thankful to be considered one of the “ten most dangerous organizations in America.”
We’re thankful that visiting the Mall of America isn’t really like visiting Iraq.
We’re thankful President Bush isn’t giving out any more back rubs.
We’re thankful for 12-year olds who can take down Rush Limbaugh in a fight.
We’re thankful our Halloween costumes aren’t very “original.”
We’re thankful no one (except the birds) gets hurt when Dick Cheney goes hunting now.
We’re thankful for “phony soldiers” who have the courage to speak out about the war in Iraq.
We’re thankful the “Commander Guy” has only 425 days left in office.
And last but not least: We’re thankful to ThinkProgress readers for their tips, energy, and support.
Happy Thanksgiving! — The Think Progress Team.
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