Author: Buck Banks

According to a Pew Global Attitudes Survey completed in April and May, most people in the world continue to have a low, if not downright hostile, opinion of the United States (surprise!). The poll surveyed 17,000 people in 16 countries, and found that the U.S.’s rep is even worse than its president’s approval rating here at home.

In a sign that outsourcing works, however, the study found that the U.S. was most highly regarded in India, where 71% of those polled expressed a positive opinion of the United States, compared with 54% three years ago. That was our highest rating. In the world. A full 62% of Poles think we’re okay, though.

In Europe, we’ve gained a little of the ground lost after Herr Bush started stomping on Iraq, but China actually is viewed more positively by the Europeans than the country that saved their asses in WWII. The former Axis powers of Japan and Germany, and reliable France are all more highly regarded than the United States among European countries. Even (our friends)the British and (our neighbors to the North) the Canadians have a more favorable view of those three nations than they do of America.

Most Muslim countries still hate us, of course, but extreme hostility has faded slightly, with people in some Muslim countries perceiving the U.S. as supporting democracy in the Middle East. U.S. approval ratings are 23% in Turkey and Pakistan, and 21% in Jordan.

Although European publics view China more favorably than the United States, fortunately, they are opposed to the idea of China becoming a military rival to the U.S. Majorities in every European nation — except Turkey believe China’s emergence as a military superpower would be a bad thing. In Turkey and predominantly Muslim countries, where they hate us, a majority think a Chinese challenge to American military power would be a good thing (except for all that nucular fallout — unless it fell on Turkey).

There is widespread support across every country surveyed for some country or group of countries to emerge as a military rival to the U.S. In France, 85% of respondents believe the EU or another country should emerge as a military rival to the U.S. (as long as it’s not France, of course). The United States does not agree, and wants to remain the world’s biggest bully.

When asked about their perceptions of Americans, the rest of the world gets downright personal:

In most Western countries surveyed, majorities associate Americans with the positive characteristics “honest,” “inventive” and “hardworking.” At the same time, substantial numbers also associate Americans with the negative traits “greedy” and “violent.” Canadians, who presumably have the greatest contact with Americans, agree with Europeans on the negatives, but are less likely to view Americans as honest. And Canada is the only Western nation in which a majority (53 percent) regards Americans as rude.

Muslim publics, including Indonesians, are highly critical of Americans in many respects. In particular, they are much more likely than others to view the American people as immoral. Yet people in predominantly Muslim countries also see Americans as hardworking and inventive.

The Chinese are also largely critical of Americans. They are the least likely of these 16 publics to consider Americans hardworking (44 percent) and just over a third (35 percent) see Americans as honest. A majority of Chinese associate Americans with being violent (61 percent) and greedy (57 percent). The one positive trait most Chinese associate with Americans is inventive (70 percent).

By contrast, Indians hold largely positive views of the American people. Clear majorities see Americans as inventive, hardworking and honest (86%, 81% and 58%, respectively). None of the negative traits is linked with Americans by a majority in India.

But hey, we hate ourselves, too: a large percentage of the U.S. public (70 percent) characterizes American people as greedy, and nearly half (49 percent) see their fellow countrymen as violent.

MoveOn.org is currently running a poll to see if its supporters want to back a movement to get U.S. troops out of Iraq — ASAP. The proposed campaign would support the Jones-Abercrombie resolution currently before Congress that would require Herr Bush to put together a plan by the end of 2005 for bringing home all U.S. troops from Iraq, with withdrawal beginning no later than Oct. 1, 2006.

So far, of the 103,015 people who have voted, 83.9 percent want MoveOn to move on with the Jones-Abercrombie resolution. The other 16.1 percent say that MoveOn should concentrate on other issues or should try another route to get U.S. troops home. Vote here.

According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, an official report from the Department of Interior’s Inspector General let stand a $120 million rip-off of the public over a land deal in Florida. In 2002, the Department of the Interior paid that sum to the Collier family (Collier County is named for the family patriarch, Baron Collier) for its gas and oil holdings in the Big Cypress National Preserve, located on the western edge of the Everglades.

Because the Collier clan are in tight with both Jeb and George, they qualified for a sum that was more than 12 times the amount the supposed energy holdings were actually worth. The BIG buyout was announced at a May 2002 White House ceremony intended to bolster the Bush bros’ environmental creds. It is notable that no significant oil or gas reserves have ever been found in Florida, mainly because it is formed primarily of oolitic limestone and spent most of the last hundred million years under water.

The nearly three-year investigation did find that Interior Secretary Gale Norton placed one of her top aides, Ann Klee (now the General Counsel for the EPA) in charge of closing the deal but made no other mention of Norton except to “commend” her for actions taken after another, similar land exchange scandal in Utah. Instead, Earl Devaney, the Interior Inspector General, repeatedly cited unnamed “political appointees” or vague forces. One key but typical passage of the IG report reads as follows:

“Exploiting a combination of public policy, politics, and environmentalism, which was being fueled by the demoralization of career DOI employees, at one extreme, and synchophantical enabling, at the other, [Collier Resources Company] took complete advantage of a negotiating environment weighted heavily in its favor.”

PEER noted that beside the enormous payout, the deal also ran counter to President Bush’s drive to increase energy production on public lands and the administration’s moratorium on parkland purchases.

Congress has yet to appropriate the dough, though, so the deal’s still in limbo.

Taking my cue from CPB chairman Ken Tomlinson, I have conducted an independent, fair and balanced investigation into Pensito Review’s content and I am herewith prepared to make my findings public for the first time.

Pensito Review has been infected by LIBERAL BIAS. Indeed, my exhaustive investigation has failed to turn up a single article or link that could be construed to be the least bit CONSERVATIVE. Double-indeed, the contributors of Pensito Review, as well as its readers who post comments, appear to be consistently atheistic gender-bending commies who hate everything that Americans hold near and dear, and they don’t have any respect for elected politicians or the God-based traditions that have made this country great.

Just look at the way they pick on Gov. Arnold and Gov. Jeb, how often they employ incendiary and inflammatory rhetoric, how snarky and sarcastic they are, how often they use words like “wingnut” and “Repugs” to describe those whose political beliefs they eschew.

Granted, I, too, am a contributor to Pensito Review, but I can put aside my LIBERAL BIAS and evaluate the Weblog with PURE OBJECTIVITY. Plus, I would be willing (for an honorarium of just $20k) to appear before a wingnut Congressional witch-hunting committee and testify about my study of the content of Pensito Review.

For a few dollars more, I’ll even name names (sorry, Jon and Trish).

David Horowitz, the former left-wing nutjob turned right-wing nutjob, is crusading for a movement to, in his words, “increase academic freedom” on college and university campuses. Unfortunately for academia, Horowitz’ inversion of “freedom” means that professors would be forced to teach “serious alternative theories” (read: creationism) that might conflict with their own beliefs.

It’s worth noting that Jeb Bush has endorsed Horowitz, calling him a “fighter for freedom.” That should give you some idea of where Horowitz is on the wingnut spectrum.

As always, Florida is the incubator for new political movements, and is right in the vanguard of the “academic freedom” movement:

Horowitz recently lent his support to Florida State Representative Dennis Baxley’s (R-Ocala) Academic Freedom Bill of Rights. Rep. Baxley’s legislation, which in late-March passed out of the House Choice and Innovation Committee by an 8-to-2 vote (the only two Democrats on the committee voted against it) was a broad assault on academic freedom. Allegedly aimed at leveling the playing field for so-called beleaguered conservatives on the state’s campuses, the devil was clearly in the details.

“Some professors say, ‘Evolution is a fact. I don’t want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,'” Rep. Baxley maintained.

A Florida university professor countered Baxley’s claims:

“For a biologist for whom evolution is no more a theory than is the law of gravity, to have to present ‘alternative’ religiously-oriented or inspired views would be contrary to his very understanding of the scientific method. That would be comparable to Galileo being forced to recant his scientific observations that the earth revolved around the sun, and not the opposite as ordained by the Church.”

According to a legislative staff analysis of the bill, students who felt their views were disrespected in the classroom or thought they were singled out for “public ridicule” by their professors would have the right to sue them and the university.

During the debate over the Baxley bill, opponents argued that allowing students to sue their professors would create chaos in the classroom and force judges to determine what might or might not be academically appropriate.

According to the St. Petersburg Times, Rep. Baxley decided to join Horowitz’s crusade after he “attended a conservative conference in St. Louis last summer where Horowitz spoke about academic freedom. The message struck a chord [and] … after talking to Horowitz,” he introduced his bill in the Florida Legislature.

While Rep. Baxley’s bill ultimately failed to garner enough support this legislative session, its introduction signaled the beginning of a battle in Florida that could go on for a number of years and eventually result in a future law.

Besides Florida, 13 other states have introduced some type of “academic freedom” legislation, including California, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota.

Editor & Publisher quotes an Annenberg poll that found that 40 percent of respondents consider Bill O’Reilly a journalist while only 30 percent consider Bob Woodward a journalist. Blowhard wingnut Rush Limbaugh was considered by 27 percent to be a journalist, and one in five consider right-wing baseball fan George Will one.

The results gave Limbaugh an opportunity to spout more nonsense:

Limbaugh said Monday he was “not really surprised” by the results showing a quarter of Americans would describe him as a journalist. The conservative talk show host said, “I am America’s anchorman, doing news play-by-play 15 hours a week for nearly 17 years now, and this is just more evidence that the old media’s monopoly-like dominance is finished.”

Annenberg also polled journalists, whose responses were quite different:

Only 3% of journalists said Limbaugh was “somewhat close” to being a journalist and 11% said that about O’Reilly, while 93% said Woodward was “somewhat close or very close” to being a journalist.

With masterful understatement, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, said the poll results suggest the public defines the word “journalist” far differently than those in the press define it.

Duh!

With its ongoing efforts to define marriage as something that can happen only between a man and a woman, Congress is contributing to an atmosphere of negativity toward any lifestyle outside the “Leave It to Beaver” mode. According to LGBT activists, that is making an already difficult decision — whether to “come out” — all the more difficult for youths.

Besides the legislative effort, there also has been a marked increase of violence and intolerant acts toward lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered individuals, according to an article in “WireTap”:

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force recently found that LGBT hate crimes have gone up 30 percent within the past year. That is in addition to the alarming results found in a national survey of LGBT students conducted by the Office of Public Policy of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) in 2003. The survey found that, “77.9 percent heard remarks such as ‘faggot’ or ‘dyke’ frequently or often at school; 18.8 percent heard similar remarks from faculty or school staff at least some of the time; 82.9 percent reported that faculty or staff never or only sometimes intervened when they were present when such remarks were made; 84 percent personally had been verbally harassed at school because of their sexual orientation; 65.3 percent had been sexually harassed; and 39.1 percent had been physically harassed.”

Newt’s half-sis is on the case:

Candace Gingrich, youth outreach manager at the Human Rights Campaign in Washington D.C. said that we often focus on the anti same-sex initiatives around the country and fail to notice crucial victories. “There were 14 state legislatures that rejected [same-sex] marriage amendments on Election Day. But all we hear about are the 13 that passed them,” said Gingrich. “We need to get these facts out there.”

“The conversation about marriage has really only just begun. We’ve been talking about discrimination, hate crimes, and health issues for 30 or 40 years. We’ve really only been talking about marriage for a second,” Gingrich added.

And finally, the point can be made that:

“In the long run, the U.S. government cannot preach to the rest of the world about freedom and democracy if they are demonstrably not practicing themselves. They cannot legitimately make the claim that U.S. rights can be restricted based on traditional religious grounds, especially as European countries move towards increased rights for LGBTIQ people,” said Christine Johnson, coordinator of TransAdvocate.org based in Olympia, Wash.

But when has hypocrisy ever been a deterrent for the U.S gubmint?

The U.S. Supreme Court today refused to rule on a lower-court judgement that found against the Federal Communications Commission and a Repug-led attempt to ease TV and radio station ownership limits.

The decision was a loss for broadcast and newspaper companies and a victory for critics of media consolidation.

Without comment, the justices let stand a ruling by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that blocked the 2003 rules change.

The Supreme Court’s decision not to intervene sends the rules back to the Federal Communications Commission for revision.

The rules, adopted by the FCC on a 3-to-2 Republican-led party-line vote, aimed to let companies own more TV and radio stations in a single market, and to own a daily newspaper and nearby broadcast station.

FCC: “Curses! Foiled again!”

If you think the Dems have been too hard on their leader for being too hard on the Republicans, sign a petition letting them know here. The peition, written by members of the Daily Kos, is almost as short as the warning message about invalid signatures is long:

To: Democrats in U.S. Congress

Recently some Democrats in Congress have chastised Governor Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, saying that he does not speak for the party.

We the undersigned have a simple message we would like to convey to you:

Howard Dean Speaks For Me

And, we respectfully request that you refrain from public criticism of your fellow Democrats and that you begin to speak for us as well

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

If you think the chairman of the Democratic Party should be able to call a wingnut a wingnut without being pilloried by his party, consider signing.

Public Citizen has broken a story based on a close reading of the 700-plus-page energy bill currently being debated by the Senate and other public documents. Apparently, under the bill, a consortium formed by four former Enron executives qualifies for hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees for a $2.8 billion coal gassification facility in Wyoming.

Public Citizen’s investigation to find out who this loan would benefit narrowed the answer to just one company: Houston-based DKRW Energy. This company, named after the four Enron executives that founded it – Jon C. Doyle, Robert C. Kelly, H. David Ramm and White – formed a subsidiary, Medicine Bow Fuel & Power, to develop a $2.8 billion coal gasification project in Medicine Bow, Wyo. The DKRW facility meets all the criteria required in the legislation: The coal will be supplied from Arch Coal mines neighboring the power facility; it will stuff carbon dioxide emissions into oil wells; and the facility will be located in a western state (Wyoming) at an altitude above 4,000 feet.

Following the release of the story, Senate Energy Committee representatives contacted Public Citizen with an explanation that several other companies also qualify for funds under the bill’s provision. But since neither the names of the companies nor their projects are publicly available, Public Citizen has not been able to confirm the assertion.

The organization did note that the former Enron execs likely finagled the loan provisions because, given their track records, they were finding it difficult to secure private funding for their pork-barrel project.