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Politics

Don Imus responds: I was misunderstood!

By Faiz Shakir on Jun 23, 2008 at 11:07 pm

imus190.jpgEarlier today, Don Imus again made racially-charged comments about a black athlete. Responding to wave of criticism that ensued, Imus claimed this afternoon that he had been misunderstood:

Asked in an e-mail message what he was trying to convey, Mr. Imus wrote: “I meant he was being picked on because he’s black.’’ He added that Dick Gregory, a veteran comedian and activist who is black, would be a guest on his show on Tuesday, to discuss the death of George Carlin. “We’ll see what he thinks,’’ Mr. Imus wrote. “I mean…come on!’’

Take a listen to the audio again and see what you think.

Health

Requirements In Global AIDS Initiative Cost Lives

By Igor Volsky on Jun 23, 2008 at 8:30 pm

abstinencebillboard.JPG

This morning, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice called on Congress to remove “language restricting the participation of family planning organizations” from the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief or PEPFAR, an international health initiative dedicated to combating HIV/AIDS around the world:

The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and our partners in the interfaith community are urging the Senate to hear the voices of people of faith…we want PEPFAR to be reauthorized and we welcome the increased funds — but we want language restricting the participation of family planning organizations to be removed.

Competing House and Senate versions of the bill to expand PEPFAR both seek to boost funding to $50 billion over the next five years. While the House version allows “groups to use PEPFAR funding for HIV testing and education in family planning clinics,” the bill expands the global gag rule, and does not extend PEPFAR funding “for contraception.”

Under the House legislation, family-planning services that accept funding through PEPFAR would be restricted in two ways. First, PEPFAR funding would impose a gag-rule to prohibit family planning initiatives from using their own funds for performing or promoting abortion. Secondly, PEPFAR-funded programs would not be allowed to use PEPFAR funds on family planning services.

Both versions also replace the current earmark requiring 33% of prevention funds to be spent on abstinence only programs with a provision that obliges “the Global AIDS Coordinator [to] report to Congress if less than 50% of funding to prevent sexual transmission of HIV is spent on abstinence and fidelity programs.” Read more

Politics

Hastert wastes $20,000 in taxpayer money on lavish trips during last 11 months in office.

By Amanda Terkel on Jun 23, 2008 at 8:12 pm

hasterthawaii.jpg The AP has found out that during former House speaker Dennis Hastert’s last 11 months in office, he “managed to visit seven nations and run up a tab of just over $20,000 in taxpayer-funded overseas trips.” Hastert — who held no leadership position in Congress during this time — traveled to the UK, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, China, Japan, and Colombia. In contrast, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) took taxpayer funded trips to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, Kuwait, and Jordan; he “received $1,195 in per diem, but spent $827.16 and returned the rest to the U.S. treasury.”

Politics

Perino: It’s ‘Irresponsible To Suggest’ That There Is ‘A Short-Term Response’ To Gas Prices

By Ali Frick on Jun 23, 2008 at 7:20 pm

Last week, White House spokesman Tony Fratto said that anyone who was promoting a quick fix to high gas prices “is trying to fool people.” Today, press secretary Dana Perino echoed those claims, emphasizing that “there is no magic wand” to dealing with gas prices. She also stated flatly, “There’s not going to be a short-term response,” calling it “irresponsible” to suggest there could be:

PERINO: So the important thing that we need to do is…find ways that we can continue to express to the American people not to expect a short-term response. There’s not going to be a short-term response. And it would be irresponsible for anybody to suggest there would be.

Watch it:

Perino acknowledged that “there’s not a real good short-term answer to high gas prices,” claiming, “we have been very explicit about that.” In fact, Bush and his allies have repeatedly insinuated that expanding domestic drilling would offer a near-term solution to America’s energy crisis.

– In his radio address this weekend, Bush explained that “the fundamental problem” with high oil and gas prices is supply and demand, adding, “One obvious solution is for America to increase our domestic oil production.”

– Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — whose call for offshore drilling was embraced by Bush one day after he announced it — explained last week that, in favoring offshore drilling, he was seeking to “address the concerns of Americans, who are struggling right now to pay for gasoline.”

– House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) stated unequivocally that expanding domestic drilling “will reduce gasoline prices in the short term.”

As made clear by the Energy Information Administration — and McCan’s own economic adviser — expanding offshore drilling “would not have a significant impact” on oil prices. Will Perino tell Bush, McCain, and the conservative leadership in Congress to act more responsibly?

Update

Here are some actions that could, in fact, reduce gas prices immediately.

Politics

The Irony of Reform

By ThinkProgress on Jun 23, 2008 at 6:15 pm

It’s interesting that the result of not one but both major parties nominating presidential candidates known as process-oriented reformers has merely resulted in an usually large volume of campaign finance shenanigans — from McCain illegally backing out of the system after having used public financing to secure a loan, to Obama wriggling out of a commitment to use public financing for the general election. I bet that two years ago, reformers would have told you that a McCain-Obama matchup would be great for their cause. In practice, it’s turned out to be terrible.

And I think it’s not a coincidence. McCain and Obama both feel they can take the hit on these issues in part because they’re both branded as “reformers” and thus don’t need to worry as much about being perceived as corrupt. Years ago, of course, McCain had a different reputation as a consequence of the Keating 5 business and became a reformer in part in order to change that reputation. But politicians who have the clean image can feel free to ditch process constraints whenever convenient.

Security

What’s Arabic For ‘Always At War’?

By Matt Duss on Jun 23, 2008 at 6:12 pm

Hard at the task of rehabilitating the Iraq war on the grounds that such a war was “inevitable”, historian Arthur Herman claims “by the time George Bush entered the White House in January 2001, the United States was already at war with Iraq, and in fact had been at war for a decade, ever since the first Gulf war in the early 1990’s.”

There is obviously a huge difference between an economic sanctions regime backed by occasional airstrikes, and a hundred thousand-strong invasion force piling into Iraq. The latter is generally understood as war, the former as… an economic sanctions regime backed by occasional airstrikes. One can argue that the situation as it existed in the 1990s vis a vis Iraq was unsustainable — I agree that it was — but Herman’s retroactively redefining that situation as “war” is a pretty transparent attempt to downplay the radical nature of President Bush’s doctrine of preventive war, to ignore the massive and unprecedented propaganda campaign that was used to sell this doctrine to the American people, and to shift blame for the massive costs incurred by what is now correctly understood as an unnecessary war of choice.

But not only does Herman want to convince us that the U.S. was already at war with Iraq then, he also would have us to believe that the U.S. is “already at war with Iran” now. Making this argument back in October, Herman wrote that “a realistic war scenario with Iran would involve an extensive air and naval campaign without a single American soldier having to set foot on Iranian soil” :

From start to finish, such an operation would probably require no more than one more carrier group than is already in the area, as well as one Airborne Brigade Combat Team and one Marine Expeditionary Brigade, combined with Special Ops units-fewer troops than reinforced General Petraeus’s current surge in Iraq. In a matter of days or weeks, the key components of the Iranian oil industry would be in American hands even as Iran itself ground to a halt.

As if the spectacle of warmongers promising cakewalks in neoconservative magazines weren’t enough to set off alarm bells, note that Herman’s October item received admiring comment from none other than Michael Ledeen, who theorized (just to pick one of countless examples of Ledeenian silliness) back in 2003 that France and Germany had “struck a deal with radical Islam and with radical Arabs: You go after the United States, and we’ll do everything we can to protect you, and we will do everything we can to weaken the Americans.”

Smarter, please.

Climate Progress

Sorry, deniers & delayers, Part 1: Even U.S gov says human emissions are changing the climate

By Joe Romm on Jun 23, 2008 at 5:57 pm

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program (aka the Bush Administration) has issued a must-read report, Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate. It wouldn’t be must read or even big news if it weren’t for the fact that

  • Many environmentalists stopped talking about the extreme weather/global warming link a decade ago.
  • The deniers, the delayers, and of course the Roger Pielkes of the world have pushed back against any claims that climate change is driving the extreme weather we see today [as Chico Marx (dressed as Groucho) said "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"]
  • The media has been brow-beaten by the deniers into downplaying the connection. The journalist Ross Gelbspan has a long discussion of this in his great 2004 book, Boiling Point — I will blog on this later.
  • The Midwest is experiencing the second “500-year flood” in 13 years. [Don't worry, big media, it's all just a big coincidence like the deniers keep saying.]

This report is really an “I told you so” from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center and Tom Karl in particular, who has been a real leader in this area, helping to create the still rarely-discussed Climate Extremes Index (see “Global warming causes deluges and flooding, just like the Midwest is seeing (again).”

If you don’t read the whole report, at least read the synopsis:

Read more

Politics

Karl Rove Throws Stones From His Glass Country Club

By Faiz Shakir on Jun 23, 2008 at 5:56 pm

ABC News reports that, during a breakfast with Republican insiders at the Capitol Hill Club, Karl Rove attacked Barack Obama as “the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by.”

If there’s anyone who knows anything about country club settings, it’s Karl Rove. As Matthew Yglesias writes, “Rove assumes that ‘you know this guy’ but unless ‘you’ are a wealthy person from the past, you probably don’t know a guy like that.” Here are just a few reports of Rove’s country club fundraisers in recent years:

ivernessdone.gif– “The problem for these Democrats is that their policies would have consequences and their policies would make us more, not less, vulnerable,” Rove said from a podium beneath the beamed, vaulted ceilings and brass chandeliers of the Inverness Country Club in Toledo. “And in war, weakness emboldens your enemies and it’s an invitation for disaster.” [AP, 8/29/06]

sunnysidedone.gif– “While Karl Rove was enroute to talk at a campaign fundraiser for Republican congressional candidate Mike Whalen at the members-only Sunnyside Country Club Monday, roughly three dozen protesters stood along Ansborough Avenue with signs showing what they thought of President Bush’s deputy chief of staff.” [WCF Courier, 6/26/06]

shendone.gif– “Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove called on Oakland County Republicans for their support in the next presidential election and criticized Democrats for wanting to pull out of Iraq during a speech Saturday night at Shenandoah Country Club. […] The crowd at the $65-a-ticket event gave him a standing ovation at 6:50 p.m. as he approached a podium.” [Detroit News, 3/25/07]

tucsondone.gif– “Putting Democrats in charge of Congress would embolden terrorists and put Americans in danger, presidential adviser Karl Rove told local Republicans at a fundraiser Friday. […] The fundraiser, at Tucson Country Club, attracted other Republican candidates, including Congressional District 7 candidate Ron Drake and gubernatorial candidate Len Munsil, who used the opportunity to criticize his opponent.” [Arizona Daily Star, 9/30/06]

The truth is that Karl Rove is “the guy at the country club,” cozying up with the members for a few bucks.

Digg It!

Update

Greg Sargent writes, “It should also be noted, of course, that Rove took a man who actually is a country club denizen who makes ‘snide comments’ about others — that would be George W. Bush — and turned him into a regular Joe.” Steve Benen adds, “Usually [Rove's] ugly attacks aren’t quite this silly.”

Yglesias

Taking the Train

By ThinkProgress on Jun 23, 2008 at 5:16 pm

2175742852_c8a33b61c0.jpg

Via Ryan Avent, it seems that train ridership is way up: “Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May is not usually a strong travel month.” Nevertheless, “the railroad, and its suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet the demand.”

We could, however, expand train service at a medium pace to meet the demand were we so inclined. It’s also worth noting a few things about the state of passenger rail in the United States. One is that outside the northeast corridor the general quality of service is pretty poor. The other is that outside the northeast corridor most of the focus is perversely on long-distance routes rather than on the short routes where the demand is. And last, on the northeast corridor where a decent train runs on a reasonable route the supply is so limited that the fares are absurdly high.

Nevertheless, ridership is growing. If we were to invest money in expanding capacity on the Acela corridor, and servicing the shorter inter-city trips (Miami-Tampa, Chicago-Milwaukee rather than NY-New Orleans) for which rail is well-suited, then we’d really be getting somewhere. This is to say nothing of adopting Barack Obama’s goal of actually having the fastest trains in the world.

Photo by Flickr user red arrow used under a Creative Commons license

Politics

House Judiciary subcommittee to consider subpoena for Feith.

By ThinkProgress on Jun 23, 2008 at 5:15 pm

Last week, former undersecretary of defense Doug Feith was scheduled to testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee, but he refused to appear at the last minute to avoid testifying alongside Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson. At the hearing, chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said that Feith “would be compelled to testify later.” Today, Nadler announced that the subcommittee will consider a resolution tomorrow authorizing the issuance of a subpoena to compel Feith’s testimony.

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