- Countdown did a piece on Frank Rich's column in the Times this past Sunday which blasted McCain's "stupid" economics. (His words, not mine, nor Keith Olbermann's, but that's not to say we don't agree).
- As reported here, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki effectively endorsed Obama's plan for the Iraq war. Upon hearing this, the Bush administration (with the McCain campaign close behind) cried "lost in translation!" and claimed it was all in error...except, as Hardball today reported, that the translator was the Prime Minister's personal translator and, according to the New York Times' review, there was no error.
- Rachel Maddow, also on Countdown, cited another Times report which revealed that President Bush has appointed his daughter's ex-boyfriend, a college dropout whose previous jobs included holding the President's coat and retrieving Sharpie pens for White House board meetings, to be his new Deputy Chief of Staff. Just in case this wasn't already all too clear, the "best and brightest" (as President Kennedy referred to his cabinet and closest advisers) have not and will never advise the current President, unquestionably the least competetant in the past hundred years.
- T. Boone Pickens continues his campaign to steal the environment for the GOP, appearing about once every eight minutes on MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN between two and six, pacific time. Yes, I counted.
21 July 2008
Notes from the afternoon talk shows
Obama, O-Balla'
As McCain cavorted with fellow old man President George H.W. Bush in Maine this weekend, struggling with political geography, the English language, and finding his Geritol all the while, Obama nailed jumpshots in Iraq with troops stationed in the mideast:
...damn, he shoots better than Lamar Odom. Here he is in high school:
If this election comes down to a SpaceJam style playoff, McCain is done.
...damn, he shoots better than Lamar Odom. Here he is in high school:
If this election comes down to a SpaceJam style playoff, McCain is done.
Obama On His Own: Rice Tells Embassies Not To Assist Candidates On Eve of Obama Trip
To the victor goes the spoils, I suppose. Makes you wonder if this would have happened had McCain taken a trip first.
Neat political move here that Anne Gearan of the HuffPost caught before BigNews.
Neat political move here that Anne Gearan of the HuffPost caught before BigNews.
Old and In The Way: McCain fails political geography, again
Only a week after incorrectly referring to the Czech Republic as Czechoslovakia, Senator John McCain continued to demonstrate his senility this morning in a televised interview on ABCs Good Morning America.
Unfortunately for Mr. McCain, Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border.
For what it's worth, the Senator's archaic understanding of international politics (let alone political geography) is surely an upgrade from President Bush's utter incompetence. But then again, so are many seventh graders.
Meanwhile, Senator Obama will speak in Berlin, Germany this Thursday, and I hear oddsmakers are already drawing lines for whether McCain mentions "Austria-Hungary" or "Prussia."
Unfortunately for Mr. McCain, Iraq and Pakistan do not share a border.
For what it's worth, the Senator's archaic understanding of international politics (let alone political geography) is surely an upgrade from President Bush's utter incompetence. But then again, so are many seventh graders.
Meanwhile, Senator Obama will speak in Berlin, Germany this Thursday, and I hear oddsmakers are already drawing lines for whether McCain mentions "Austria-Hungary" or "Prussia."
20 July 2008
Obama-al Maliki 2008?
It appears that even the Iraqi government is on board with Obama's plan for Iraq. An interview in the German magazine Der Spiegel included this exchange with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki:
Seriously though, given our country's propensity to imperialize, I mean, "liberate," vast and often irrelevant regions of the Earth, what prevents us from expanding the electoral college to include those nations we occasionally invade and occupy (and liberate)?
Someone should look into this, maybe we can set a "time horizon."
SPIEGEL: Would you hazard a prediction as to when most of the US troops will finally leave Iraq?And a new candidate emerges in the veepstakes! Obama-al Maliki '08? Not being a naturalized citizen could hurt him, but al Maliki represents the key "occupied peoples" swing demographic and the polls have him at over a 55 percent approval rating among on-the-fence Hillary voters: white women above the age of 25.
Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.
SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain?
Maliki: Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems. Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business. But it's the business of Iraqis to say what they want. And that's where the people and the government are in general agreement: The tenure of the coalition troops in Iraq should be limited.
Seriously though, given our country's propensity to imperialize, I mean, "liberate," vast and often irrelevant regions of the Earth, what prevents us from expanding the electoral college to include those nations we occasionally invade and occupy (and liberate)?
Someone should look into this, maybe we can set a "time horizon."
18 July 2008
11 July 2008
Pickens' Plan Deconstructed
There was an interesting ad during Hardball the other day that had a man with a great southern drawl talking about energy dependence from renewable sources. I found out at the end of the ad that the man was none other than the shameless part-architect of the 2004 swiftboat campgain, Oklahoma oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who was merely plugging his modestly entitled “Pickens’ Plan” for energy dependence on national television.
The plan’s main component is a massive investment in wind turbines across the corridor between North Dakota and Texas—also known as Pickens’ backyard—to produce 20 percent of America’s electricity needs.
This theoretically allows America’s abundant natural gas deposits, which currently provides for 27 percent of US energy, to be transformed into automotive fuels. Never mind that less than 1% of all US cars on the road are presently equipped to run on natural gas, that can be dealt with after Pickens and his cohorts receive a few hundred-million dollar contracts to put windmills where their now bone-dry oil wells once gored the Earth.
Yet, despite the plan’s unashamed primary motive of fattening a few hundred wallets in rural mid-America, Pickens actually has a point. And a pretty damn good one at that.
As the plan’s website bellows in bold print aimed directly at the leagues of insular, ignorant, and downright bitter Americans who remember when the world depended upon America for fuel: “the US is the Saudi Arabia of wind power.”
That Pickens could really care less about energy dependence, wind power, or the environment is irrelevant at this point. Regrettably, Pickens, like most twentieth-century Americans, still thinks in the short-sighted and self-indulgent terms of the inviolable free-market, which paradigmatically ignores common cause and emphasizes only the individual bottom line.
But until Americans, indeed the rest of the world, shift their social understanding so as to genuinely cooperate towards a common good and delay self-gratification, this lamentable sort of economic incentivization is the best, nay only, type of collective action possible.
Still, as with many things during an election summer, “Pickens’ Plan” seems to reek of partisan politics.
While both presidential candidates have plans which emphasize wind energy and natural gas, the plan itself appears, effectively, as an attempt to capture a now popular idea that Democrats have been touting for a long time and turn it into a political lever for the Republican Party.
During this election season in particular, concerns about the environment, energy dependence, and global warming have been a powerful pull on many independents, and even Republicans, to vote with the Democratic Party, whose coalition has long included environmentalists who foresaw global warming and advocated alternative energy sources.
This of course frightened the GOP, whose reign of terror and politics of fear has been primarily effective at riling up rural American voters to turn out in droves on election day under the belief that a Republican led government would be best able to prevent that perpetually forthcoming dirty bomb attack in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, or the Dakotas…
Now that most Americans are more concerned with the price of gas and the severity of the next Katrina than they are with the daily terror alert level or the whereabouts of Al Qaeda splinter cells, the GOP is having a harder time gaining momentum, let alone brainwashing a country.
But by emphasizing that Pickens’ plan will “bring jobs back to the jobs to rural America,” the Republican Party, via Pickens, is trying to rally those same independent or right leaning voters who may have lost interest or even defected to the left.
Do not be fooled by this neat trick. While the Republicans have proven themselves to be adept and sly politicians over the past fifteen years, they have yet to muster any substantial modicum of real concern for the environment or a completely post-oil economy.
If it is not already all too clear, the GOP has no committed interest in real change, let alone sufficiently changing energy policies. Pickens’ Plan, though it reflects the worst of our selfish society, just might work, and indeed, Pickens and his cohorts have a financial interest in it working.
But all that considered, if John McCain is in the White House at 12:01 on January 20th 2009, it all doesn’t mean a damn thing.
The plan’s main component is a massive investment in wind turbines across the corridor between North Dakota and Texas—also known as Pickens’ backyard—to produce 20 percent of America’s electricity needs.
This theoretically allows America’s abundant natural gas deposits, which currently provides for 27 percent of US energy, to be transformed into automotive fuels. Never mind that less than 1% of all US cars on the road are presently equipped to run on natural gas, that can be dealt with after Pickens and his cohorts receive a few hundred-million dollar contracts to put windmills where their now bone-dry oil wells once gored the Earth.
Yet, despite the plan’s unashamed primary motive of fattening a few hundred wallets in rural mid-America, Pickens actually has a point. And a pretty damn good one at that.
As the plan’s website bellows in bold print aimed directly at the leagues of insular, ignorant, and downright bitter Americans who remember when the world depended upon America for fuel: “the US is the Saudi Arabia of wind power.”
That Pickens could really care less about energy dependence, wind power, or the environment is irrelevant at this point. Regrettably, Pickens, like most twentieth-century Americans, still thinks in the short-sighted and self-indulgent terms of the inviolable free-market, which paradigmatically ignores common cause and emphasizes only the individual bottom line.
But until Americans, indeed the rest of the world, shift their social understanding so as to genuinely cooperate towards a common good and delay self-gratification, this lamentable sort of economic incentivization is the best, nay only, type of collective action possible.
Still, as with many things during an election summer, “Pickens’ Plan” seems to reek of partisan politics.
While both presidential candidates have plans which emphasize wind energy and natural gas, the plan itself appears, effectively, as an attempt to capture a now popular idea that Democrats have been touting for a long time and turn it into a political lever for the Republican Party.
During this election season in particular, concerns about the environment, energy dependence, and global warming have been a powerful pull on many independents, and even Republicans, to vote with the Democratic Party, whose coalition has long included environmentalists who foresaw global warming and advocated alternative energy sources.
This of course frightened the GOP, whose reign of terror and politics of fear has been primarily effective at riling up rural American voters to turn out in droves on election day under the belief that a Republican led government would be best able to prevent that perpetually forthcoming dirty bomb attack in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, or the Dakotas…
Now that most Americans are more concerned with the price of gas and the severity of the next Katrina than they are with the daily terror alert level or the whereabouts of Al Qaeda splinter cells, the GOP is having a harder time gaining momentum, let alone brainwashing a country.
But by emphasizing that Pickens’ plan will “bring jobs back to the jobs to rural America,” the Republican Party, via Pickens, is trying to rally those same independent or right leaning voters who may have lost interest or even defected to the left.
Do not be fooled by this neat trick. While the Republicans have proven themselves to be adept and sly politicians over the past fifteen years, they have yet to muster any substantial modicum of real concern for the environment or a completely post-oil economy.
If it is not already all too clear, the GOP has no committed interest in real change, let alone sufficiently changing energy policies. Pickens’ Plan, though it reflects the worst of our selfish society, just might work, and indeed, Pickens and his cohorts have a financial interest in it working.
But all that considered, if John McCain is in the White House at 12:01 on January 20th 2009, it all doesn’t mean a damn thing.
03 July 2008
Rare Video Lecture from Jurgen Habermas
Just found this. Its part 1 of 8, all available on Youtube.
Habermas speaks at Purdue University and questions whether there is a future for the constitutionalization of international law, or merely a "modernization" by which the most powerful nations (read: the United States) effectively impose and enforce their own interpretation of international law on the rest of the world, voiding a post-national cosmopolitan order.
Habermas speaks at Purdue University and questions whether there is a future for the constitutionalization of international law, or merely a "modernization" by which the most powerful nations (read: the United States) effectively impose and enforce their own interpretation of international law on the rest of the world, voiding a post-national cosmopolitan order.
02 July 2008
Olbermann to Obama: A Rare Opportunity via FISA
A loophole in the FISA legislation may allow future administrations to hold the current administration (including the President) criminally accountable for abusing and often disregarding the FISA courts--providing Senator Obama with a reason to vote for it when it comes up in the Senate next week.
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