Keith Olbermann reported tonight that the bigwigs at NBC and MSNBC have decided that the war in Iraq is now officially a “civil war.” On Friday, the Los Angeles Times referred to the Iraq “civil war” in its front-page lead story.
For what it’s worth, we have been calling it a “civil war” since August.
Cries of desperation: As if we needed more examples of the chaos our government has wrought in Iraq, here are some truly chilling Web postings from inside the country. I have (possibly unwisely — hello Washington goons!) been monitoring several related Web sites: Electronic Intifada, Electronic Iraq and Electronic Lebanon.
These sites provide some insight (if they are real, and they certainly seem so, but check them out for yourself) into the situation on the ground in Iraq, Lebanon and other Middle Eastern hotspots, as well as news and analysis not filtered through the Western press. From Healing Iraq, a weblog purportedly by an Iraqi dentist named Zeyad, comes the following harrowing posts to Iraqi message boards by people at today’s Ground Zero. They constitute a sampling of how average people are trying to survive an increasingly untenuous situation for Iraqi citizens:
Apples don’t fall far from the tree:
Amid a growing barrage of front-page headlines, U.S. embassy officials “strongly suggested” President Bush’s twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara Bush, cut short their trip to Buenos Aires because of security issues, U.S. diplomatic and security sources tell ABC News.
But the girls have stayed on, celebrating their 25th birthday over the weekend and producing even more headlines about their activities…
Stories of the twins’ visit took on wild proportions in the Argentinean press. One tabloid headline had the young women running nude in the hallway of their hotel, a report the hotel staff denied to ABC News.
According to sources, the U.S. embassy encouraged the two girls to cut their stay short because the added attention was making their security very difficult.
But to the dismay and anger of some U.S. embassy and security staff, the girls stayed on.
Scary Experiments: The Bush administration’s approach to science has had an oddly alchemical aspect to it. Like those who sought to change lead into gold, Bushco’s minions have been extremely successful at transforming scientfic truth into conservative political ideology.
The latest was last week’s report from the Government Accountability Office regarding abstinence-until-marriage education programs in the United States. Although they receive about $158 million annually from the Department of Health and Human Services, these programs are not reviewed for scientific accuracy before being granted funding, according to the GAO. Why? Because there’s no scientific basis for the assertion that abstinence-until-marriage is the best birth control method available. It’s just the one that Bushco believes in.
But the GAO’s abstinence report is just the latest in a long series of findings that the administration of President George W. Bush has systematically manipulated science to comply with ideology. Inter Press Service News Agency provides a comprehensive run-down of how federal agencies have repeatedly knuckled under to the anti-science Luddites of the Bush administration in order to make ideology into policy.
On the subject of abstinence education, the administration changed sex education performance measures to produce the appearance that scientific evidence supports abstinence-only programs.
President Bush has consistently supported the view that sex education should teach “abstinence only” and not include information on other ways to avoid sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Until recently, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) initiative called “Programs That Work” identified sex education programs that have been found to be effective in scientific studies and provided this information through its Web site.
All five “Programs That Work” provided comprehensive sex education to teenagers, and none were “abstinence-only.” But the CDC later ended this initiative and deleted information about these proven sex education programs from its web site. Information about condom use and efficacy was also deleted from the CDC web site. The CDC replaced a comprehensive fact sheet on condoms with one that emphasised condom failure rates and the effectiveness of abstinence.
In banning federal funding for research on new stem cell lines, President Bush stated that “more than 60 genetically diverse” lines were available for potential research. Soon thereafter, then-HHS Secretary Thompson acknowledged that the correct number was 24 to 25. Still later, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni told Congress that only 11 stem cell lines were widely available to researchers.
Global warming reports by the Environmental Protection Agency on the risks of climate change have been suppressed. The White House added so many hedges to the climate change section of the EPA’s report card on the environment that then-administrator Christie Todd Whitman deleted the section rather than publish one she felt was scientifically inaccurate.
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I’ve been a fan of Keith Olbermann since the early 1990s when he was a sportscaster on local news here in Los Angeles. I am the opposite of a sports fan and yet he somehow made football, baseball and the rest seem almost interesting.
This year, Mr. Olbermann did as much as anyone in the media to soften up the Republicans in advance of the midterm elections.
But Mr. Olbermann’s “special comments” about Bush Administration’s malfeasance gave the cover of mainstream legitimacy for criticism of the president and his party to spine-challenged liberal pols. The editorials also helped make his “Countdown” show the top-rated live news program at last-place MSNBC.
But Democrats should not count on Olbermann to look the other way if they whiff their opportunity to lead:
“If the Democrats don’t undo a lot of the things that have been done, like the Military Commissions Act and many of the other infringements on freedom, as I see it, there will be a special comment with their name on it,” Olbermann vowed.
I believe him. And the Dems had better believe it, too. Democratic leaders should consider Mr. Olbermann to be the proverbial canary in the coal mine. If he starts to squawk, I hope they’ll listen.
Now we know the real reason Cheney is visiting the Saudis. He’s begging for millions for Bush’s presidential library.The Worst President Ever will spend the rest of his time in office raising $500 million to build the most expensive presidential library ever constructed:
Bush loyalists have already identified wealthy heiresses, Arab nations and captains of industry as potential “mega” donors … The rest of the cash will come from donors willing to pony up $25,000 to $5 million.
The library and think tank will be built at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
I couldn’t stifle a guffaw when I read that Dubya’s library will also include a “think tank.” Why would a president whose signature accomplishment has been suppressing dissent need a think tank? And does he know that “library” is not pronounced “lie-berry?”
The number of books this man has read could probably fit in a small sized storage bin, leaving one to wonder why on earth he needs a $500 million library.
The answer, of course, is that Bush and his team are out to create a false legacy of his presidency, and rewriting reality costs money. The exaggerated scale of this project smacks of historical revisionism on a level that would make Stalin blush — a gigantic Potemkin memorial (to mix Russian political analogies) to a 43rd U.S. presidency that never happened.
How will this presidential library deal with Pres. Bush’s extraordinary record of incompetence — including dividing the country before taking it to war, the losses in this unnecessary war of hundreds of thousands of lies and billions of taxpayer dollars, his apathy and incompetence in the face of the Katrina disaster, skyrocketing deficits and foreign debt, enabling polluters, flagrantly breaking laws on eavesdropping and turning the United States into a global pariah – -just for starters?
It won’t deal with them, of course. They’ll be swept under the rug.
This final project of his term in office is emblematic of the life and career of George W. Bush. He gained the presidency with little or no experience, preparation or even aptitude for governing. Six years later, he has made a colossal mess of things. So now — just as he did with his business failures along the way — he is calling on his wealthy friends and his father’s supporters to bail him out, this time to the tune of a half a billion dollars, which is an obscene amount of money to build a monument for a man with such meager talents and so few accomplishments.
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
