Month: October 2006

Casualities Spike in Iraq

Jon Ponder

Last throes, cont’d, cont’d…

The number of U.S troops wounded in Iraq has surged to its highest monthly level in nearly two years as American GIs fight block-by-block in Baghdad to try to check a spiral of sectarian violence that U.S. commanders warn could lead to civil war.

Last month, 776 U.S. troops were wounded in action in Iraq, the highest number since the military assault to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah in November 2004, according to Defense Department data. It was the fourth-highest monthly total since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Foley Case Is Driving Rightwing Crazy, Literally

Jon Ponder
Stunned onlookers point out to Brooks that The Vagina Monologues is a play, whereas Mark Foley is a real person.

Bo-Bo has gone off the deep end:

LITERALLY. David Brooks says, oh yeah, you liberals think the Foley scandal is bad, well, there’s an underage seduction in The Vagina Monologues but you liberals love that, don’t you?

Stunned onlookers point out to Brooks that The Vagina Monologues is a play, whereas Mark Foley is a real person. Ann Althouse — she takes pictures, you know! — responds:

The third letter notes Brooks’s omission of the “simple point” that what Mark Foley did was “real” and “The Vagina Monologues” is “make-believe.” But, again, the enthusiasm for “The Vagina Monologues” is very real.

Let’s see. Liberals like “The Vagina Monologue” which has a scene depicting an inter-generational seduction. Therefore, as a liberal, I’m a hypocrite if I criticize Mark Foley’s pursuit of young boys — despite the fact I’ve never even see the play (gay men are not its target demo). This is delusional thinking. Literally.

There are a lot of things you could say to this. You could try to explain to these people the concept of fictional characters. You could try to explain that not every character in every scene speaks for the author…

It would all be a waste of time. Some kinds of ignorance are so obviously the result of hard, patient work that all you can really do about them is marvel at God’s creation and move on.

Amen.

Guantanamo Marine Says Beating Detainees Is Commonplace

Jon Ponder
“One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee’s head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others” but that he was never punished, the statement said.

Los Angeles Times:

A sworn statement from a Marine sergeant alleging that guards at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, regularly beat terrorism detainees — and bragged about it — has been turned over to Pentagon investigators.

“I was shocked and outraged to find that beatings are continuous and open,” Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, the Marine Corps’ defense coordinator for the Western United States, said Friday. Vokey is lawyer for one of the prisoners. He forwarded the two-page statement from the sergeant, a paralegal, to the inspector general’s office at the Department of Defense.

“This is offensive,” Vokey said. “I don’t want my fellow Marines treated this way if they are ever captured.”

In the statement, the sergeant said that on Sept. 23, she met a group of men at a bar on the Guantanamo base who identified themselves as guards. The woman said she spent about an hour talking with them. No one was in uniform, she said.

A 19-year-old sailor referred to only as Bo “told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being held in the prison,” the sergeant said in her statement.

“One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee’s head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others” but that he was never punished, the statement said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Chito Peppler, said Friday that officials “are reviewing this affidavit and will investigate these allegations fully.” A call to the inspector general’s office was not immediately returned.

Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand, spokesman for the Joint Task Force that oversees detention facilities at Guantanamo, said the force “will participate fully with the inspector general to learn the facts of the matter and will take action where misconduct is discovered.”

‘Resignation’ of White House Scandal Figure Announced Late Friday

Jon Ponder
Ralston received 69 of the 400-plus lobby contacts made by Abramoff’s people to White House officials, according to a congressional report.

Susan Ralston, who provides a nexus between disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Karl Rove, resigned from her job as Rove’s assistant on Friday:

Hours before the beginning of a three-day holiday weekend, the White House announced the resignation of Susan Ralston, a top aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove.

Just a week before, Ralston’s name was mentioned 162 times in a 93-page congressional report on the influence wielded in the Bush White House by uber-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, a convicted felon.

The bipartisan House Government Reform Committee studied documents from Greenberg Traurig LLP, Abramoff’s former lobbying firm — billing records and other documents — indicating that Abramoff and his team had made 485 lobbying contacts with White House officials over three years, 69 of which were with Ralston, who seemed to serve as a messenger between the Abramoff and White House camps.

Before coming to the White House, Ralston served as executive assistant to Abramoff. In her letter, dated Thursday but released to the media toward the end of the day today, Ralston wrote that “the time has come for me to pursue other opportunities.”

If the Dems take the House, my congressman, Rep. Henry Waxman, would become the chair of the Committee on Government Reform, which oversees and investigates the administration. (You may remember that Rep. Dan Burton used his chairmanship of this committee to conduct endless, proctological exams of the Clinton Admininistration.) The possibility that Waxman might be investigated Ralston’s activities makes his take on Ralston’s resignation particularly interesting:

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, said in a statement that “It looks like the White House is trying to make Susan Ralston the scapegoat.”

Waxman said the committee has unanswered questions “about the assistance that Ms. Ralston provided Mr. Abramoff from inside the White House.”

“There are also many unanswered questions about the assistance that higher-ranking White House officials appeared to provide Mr. Abramoff,” including former White House political director Ken Mehlman, who is now chairman of the Republican National Committee, Waxman added.

Screw Columbus, I’m Celebrating Leif Erikson Day on Monday

Buck Banks

Not making this up: Leif Erikson Day, 2006

A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

Leif Erikson Day honors a great son of Iceland and grandson of Norway who became one of the first Europeans known to reach North America. This day is also an opportunity to celebrate the generations of Nordic Americans who have contributed to our country and strengthened the ties that forever bind the United States with Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

Like the crew of risk takers that Leif Erikson boldly led on a quest to find new lands, Americans have always valued the ideals of exploration and discovery. A desire to seek and understand inspired their voyage more than a millennium ago, and it remains a central part of our national character as a new generation pursues great new goals today. Nordic Americans continue to make valuable contributions to our society that have expanded human knowledge and helped make our world a better place.

To honor Leif Erikson and to celebrate our citizens of Nordic-American heritage, the Congress, by joint resolution (Public Law 88-566) approved on September 2, 1964, has authorized the President to proclaim October 9 of each year as “Leif Erikson Day.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim October 9, 2006, as Leif Erikson Day. I call upon all Americans to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs to honor our rich Nordic-American heritage.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

GEORGE W. BUSH

Study: Daily Show has More Humor, Less Hype and About the Same Amount of Substance as Network News Shows

Buck Banks

But one’s funny: According to a study set to be released next summer by Indiana University, John Stewart’s Daily Show has more humor content, less hype, about the same amount of substantive news and is a hell of a lot funnier than, say, CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. Though I would suppose Couric would score higher on the cuteness factor.

“We’ve been wringing our hands for decades that the networks aren’t doing enough substance in the political coverage, so is it any real surprise that it’s just as substantive?,” Julia R. Fox, assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University, said of The Daily Show. “Our findings should allay at least some of the concerns about the growing reliance on this non-traditional source of political information, as it is just as substantive as the source that Americans have relied upon for decades.

“In an absolute sense, we should probably be concerned about both of those sources, because neither one is particularly substantive. It’s a bottom-line industry and ratings-driven. We live in an ‘infotainment’ society, and there certainly are a number of other sources available.”

GOP’s Focus on Smaller Government, Like Its Focus on Family Values, Is a Lie

Buck Banks

Bloated bureaucracy: The Republican Party has consistently run on the message of smaller government over the past three decades. One might say consistently and successfully, because it has framed the debate over the size of the government as a defining difference between itself and the Democratic “Big Government” Party.

However, according to a new report, since George W. Bush ascended to the imperial presidency, the government has gotten steadily and rapidly bigger, to a record 14.6 million civil servants, postal workers, contractors and people who work under the auspices of government grants.

‘It hardly matters who produces the goods and services as long as the federal government is honest with the public about the true cost of delivering on the promises it makes.’

Paul C. Light, the study’s author and a government professor at New York University, explains the sudden increase from 12.1 million in 2002 to 14.6 million now:

“This time, almost all of the growth can be attributed from the war on terrorism, which boosted Defense spending for both goods and services systems and covered the continued cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The rest of the hidden workforce held steady at roughly 2.9 million grantees, while civil service employment inched up and postal employment fell.”

This “hidden workforce” is the one that Republicans don’t like to count when they are tallying the smallness of their government versus the largeness of the Democrats’. Light says there are 10.5 million of them, and they absorbed nearly $400 billion in federal contracting funds and $100 billion in federal grants in 2005.

Politicians who focus on the size of the civil service and fail to acknowledge the hidden workforce “encourage the public into believing that it truly can get more for less,” Light said. And the heavy reliance on such workers, while sometimes necessary, makes it more difficult to figure out who is accountable when things go wrong, he said.

“The federal government often uses contractors and grantees to provide talent it cannot recruit, specialized services it cannot produce, competition it cannot generate among its own organizations, and equipment that it cannot and should not build itself,” Light wrote.

“It hardly matters who produces the goods and services as long as the federal government is honest with the public about the true cost of delivering on the promises it makes.”

When it comes down to the federal bureacracy, the Republicans are no better at counting than they are at accountability. But before Democrats concede the big-government argument, what say we let both sides whip out their bureacracy and see whose really is bigger.

Iraq Is the Real Scandal

Jon Ponder
We’d be a far healthier democracy if [House Speaker Dennis] Hastert was under fire for allowing Iraq to sink into a gurgling pool of its own blood.

Buck’s post yesterday summed it up: Foley’s Not the Story. If you want a sign of the true decadence of American culture, it is this: A sex scandal of any dimension or flavor will get the media up in arms in a matter of hours, whereas the senseless wasting of blood and treasure in Iraq — a killing every hour and a cost of $2 billion a week — that goes on for years is treated like a dull abstraction that partisans bicker over endlessly.

As the 16-year-old page wrote about Rep. Mark Foley’s request for his photo, that is sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick!

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Tony Norman has the same thought:

It’s fitting that former Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s sex scandal will do in the 40 days before the election what years of reporting on Bush administration incompetence and corruption couldn’t — end one-party rule in America…

Republican rule wasn’t based on moral authority earned by good judgment and civic discipline. Judging by the legislation that comes out of D.C., there’s always more talk of virtue than evidence of its practice.

Still, it was a winning strategy while it lasted. For years, Republican candidates won elections by promising to keep taxes low, their pants on and their zippers locked in the “up” position.

Demonizing “liberal Democrats” also became part of the appalling Kabuki dance of self-righteousness that dominates American politics in the Bush era. For tactical reasons, even so-called Democratic “moderates” joined in the bashing of their party’s most loyal constituents.

Still, it was only a matter of time before the mandate of heaven would be brutally withdrawn from triumphalist Republicans. No party can expect to govern forever on a steady diet of triviality and cynicism…

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