Month: January 2007

Richardson to Announce Prez Plans Sunday

Jon Ponder

Looks like Gov. Bill Richardson is in the race:

Richardson, 59, is a former congressman, U.N. ambassador and Energy Department secretary. He brings a wealth of experience in international affairs that has extended even into his governorship of a sparsely populated but politically important swing state.

He has hosted talks on North Korea’s nuclear program and most recently traveled to Sudan to meet with the country’s president to press him for an end to the bloodshed in Darfur.

Both Al Gore and Senator John Kerry considered Richardson as their running mate because of his impressive portfolio, his potential to win over Hispanic voters and his home in a western swing state.

Yet Richardson enters the 2008 race as an underdog. Polling in early voting states shows him ranking near the bottom in a very crowded Democratic field led by Clinton, Obama and 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards.

Out of the candidates listed here, my money is on Richardson. He has the most experience and (probably) the least amount of baggage.

Fox Poll: 68% of Republicans Say Bush Is Doing a Heckuva Job

Jon Ponder

The new Fox News poll (pdf) finds that 58 percent of Americans disapprove of Pres. George Bush’s job performance. Conversely, 35 percent of our fellow citizens still live under the delusion that the president is not incompetent.

Seven percent of Americans say they live in blissful ignorance about the president. They “don’t know” whether he’s doing a good job. (I’ll take a prescription to whatever they are on.)

As we’ve seen consistently in polling lately, Pres. Bush’s approval is artificially high becase of support from within his own party. A whopping 68 percent of Republicans approve of his performance. About a quarter of Gops have awakened to the reality that they have elected the Worst President Ever — twice. And 8 percent of party members “don’t know” what to think about the president’s peformance.

Virginia Considering Mandatory Vaccination of Young Girls Against Sexually Transmitted Disease

Buck Banks

Hot shots: Should a state force girls as young as 9 to take a three-phase vaccination that prevents infection from a sexually transmitted disease which could lead to cervical cancer, even if it’s recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (which, by the way, advocates abstention as the best form of birth control)? Does this not sound plain wrong? According to the Virginia Pilot, it’s a question that the Virginia state legislature will have to answer, thanks to the lobbying efforts of — you guessed it — a drug company.

Hamilton said pharmaceutical company representatives approached him about submitting the bill, PROBABLY because he chairs the House Committee on Health, Welfare and Institutions.

Del. Phillip Hamilton, R-Newport News, has introduced a bill that would add the human papillomavirus vaccine to the list of immunizations needed for school attendance, and if it passes, it would go into effect in time for the 2008 school year. But when was the last time you heard of a Republican proposing a health measure for the greater good? Right, Hamilton makes a weasel’s excuse for volunteering to sponsor the bill:

Hamilton said pharmaceutical company representatives approached him about submitting the bill, probably because he chairs the House Committee on Health, Welfare and Institutions. Drug companies have been among the largest contributors to Hamilton’s election campaigns.

“Probably?” You bet, Phil. And keep cashing those checks, buddy.

While the vaccination is mandatory for school attendance, the bill does provide that parents can opt out on moral, religious or just creepy grounds, just because they feel a little queasy about vaccinating their 9-year-old against a sexually transmitted disease. Not to mention that the bill would seem to undermine Virginia’s Abstinence Education Initiative, which is run by the state health department.

Not to belittle the seriousness of cervical cancer, but there are apparently about 10,000 cases of it diagnosed in the United States every year, and about 3,700 women die of cervical cancer annually. And the papillomaviruses are so common (there are 100 strains) that 75 percent of all sexually active women will likely become infected at some point, and of those, only about 1 percent will develop cervical cancer.

To me, that does not indicate a pressing need to vaccinate milions of schoolgirls who may or may not engage in safe or unsafe sex.

But then, I don’t work for the pharmaceutical industry like Philip Hamilton does.

Ayatollah Rebukes Ahmadinejad Over Nuclear Sabre Rattling

Jon Ponder

The slapfight between Pres. George Bush and his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has resembled a pair of five-year-olds squabbling in a sandbox. Now it appears a grown-up, albeit a very scary one, has stepped in:

Iran’s outspoken president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appears to be under pressure from the highest authorities in Iran to end his involvement in its nuclear program, a sign that his political capital is declining as his country comes under increasing international pressure.

Just one month after the UN Security Council imposed sanctions on Iran to curb its nuclear program, two hard-line newspapers, including one owned by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on the president to stay out of all matters nuclear.

In the hazy world of Iranian politics, such a public rebuke was seen as a sign that the supreme leader himself — who has final say on all matters of state — might no longer support the president as the public face of defiance to the West.

It is the first sign that Ahmadinejad has lost any degree of Ayatollah Khamenei’s confidence, a potentially damaging development for a president who has rallied his nation and defined his administration by declaring nuclear power Iran’s “inalienable right.”

Iraqi View: The Surge Is a Very Bad Idea for So Many Reasons

Buck Banks

Canary in the mine shaft: Nadim al-Jabiri is a professor of political science at Baghdad University, a member of Iraq’s parliament, and the head of the Islamic Virtue Party (Al-Fadhila). He makes a pretty good argument why Iraqis think George Bush’s surge is a really bad idea:

Despite the overwhelming demands of the majority of Americans and Iraqis to end the war and occupation of Iraq, and despite the Baker-Hamilton report’s recommendations for de-escalation, President Bush and Prime Minister al-Maliki are designing a new “surge” targeting the Iraqi capital.

This will put an end to the participation of many Iraqi groups in the ongoing political process, because people like us will lose faith in achieving our goals.

and getting our country back through diplomacy.
Many Iraqis welcomed the first few steps President Bush took following the release of the Baker-Hamilton report recommendations, like pressuring Mr. Al-Maliki to include more Sunnis in the government, reconsidering the de-Baathification process, and re-evaluating the laws for distributing oil revenue. But the current Bush-Maliki plan for attacking Baghdad shows that the Baker-Hamilton report was not taken seriously enough. In fact, the new Bush-Maliki strategy is the polar opposite of that report’s major recommendations.

The new Bush-Maliki plan includes sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, mostly to Baghdad, and sending more Iraqi troops, mostly from the Kurdish militia “Peshmerga,” to Baghdad.

Increasing the U.S. troops will show Iraqis that the U.S. administration is against setting a timetable for withdrawing all the occupation forces. This will both increase and legitimize the Iraqi armed resistance to the occupation even more, and it will destroy all the other non-violent options. In addition, this will put an end to the participation of many Iraqi groups in the ongoing political process, because people like us will lose faith in achieving our goals
and getting our country back through diplomacy.

Sending the Peshmerga, the Iraqi Kurdish militia, to fight Iraqi Arabs will activate other militias and justify forming even more militias in the middle and south of Iraq. This could lead to increasing the civil violence, and might even spark an Arab-Kurd civil war that will be added to the current civil conflict that was fueled by the destruction of the Shia Shrines in Samarra in February of last year.

The current political plan of President Bush and Prime Minister al-Maliki in establishing a US-backed coalition that includes the few Shia and Sunni parties that are justifying the occupation and working to divide Iraqi into three separate regions will do nothing other than increase the violence and confirm sectarian divisions.

Iraqi political groups like Al-Fadila party, Al-Sadr movement, the National Dialogue Front, the Reconciliation and Liberation Front, and many other Sunnis, Shias, Kurd, and Turkoman groups can’t see any chance for this Bush-Maliki plan to succeed. Because, unlike our plans, this plan is not based on a political solution that can put Iraqis together in building a nonsectarian government that aims to stabilize Iraq and end any foreign intervention.

Poll: Vast Majority of GOPers Support Bush, War

Jon Ponder

Dead-enders: According to the new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, while almost two-thirds of Americans (60 percent) no longer believe the war in Iraq is worth fighting, fully three-quarters of Republicans remain convinced that America should stay in the middle of Iraq’s sectarian civil war:

By focusing on slight drops in Bush’s approval ratings, the Traditional Media overlook the threat posed to our national security by the blind, cult-like devotion to the president.

[Only about] one-fourth of Republicans said they did not believe the war was worth fighting, and a roughly equal number opposed the troop increase.

Even more alarming is the fact that a whopping 39 percent of Americans still approve of the job performance of George W. Bush, whose incompetence has been extraordinary by any rational standard.

In its analysis of these numbers, the Times, like most in the Traditional Media, focuses on the fact that support is diminishing slightly for the president and his war. But as long as Bush and his advisers know they have even this meager level of support they will continue to pursue their disastrous course in Iraq. By focusing on occasional slight drops in approval ratings, the media overlook the threat to our national security posed by this blind, cult-like devotion to Pres. Bush by a third of U.S. citizens.

Iraqi PM: Bush, Rice Comments Comfort Terrorists

Jon Ponder

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki responded yesterday to criticism of him and his government by Pres. Bush and Sec. of State Condolezza Rice, saying that their grim assessments were giving aid and comfort to terrorists:

“I believe such statements give a morale boost to the terrorists and push them toward making an extra effort, making them believe they have defeated the American administration.”
— P.M. Maliki

Commenting on a recent statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he said, “Rice is expressing her own point of view if she thinks that the [Iraqi] government is on borrowed time,” humorously suggesting that it might be the Bush administration that is on borrowed time.

“I understand and realize that inside the American administration there is some kind of a crisis situation, especially after the results of the last election,” he said.

Maliki said suggestions by Bush officials that the U.S. did not fully support his government played into the hands of insurgents.

“I believe such statements give a morale boost to the terrorists and push them toward making an extra effort, making them believe they have defeated the American administration,” Maliki said. “But I can tell you, they haven’t defeated the Iraqi government.”

The question this raises is whether Maliki is being told to act defiant toward his puppet masters in order to create an illusion of independence, or whether the puppet is truly cutting his strings.

Rocket Scientists, Brain Surgeons Agree: End is Near

Trish

Really smart people think, after six years of Bush, the world is in big trouble. But Bush is probably still trying to figure out how to “bring it on” faster.

The world edged closer toward nuclear holocaust and environmental catastrophe, a prominent international group of scientists warned today, moving their symbolic Doomsday Clock ahead two minutes.

“It is now five minutes to midnight,” said Kennette Benedict, executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “This change reflects the global failures to solve the problems posed by nuclear weapons and by climate change.”

It is now five minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock

…The symbolism of the move is significant because the organization, which includes more than a dozen Nobel laureates, has moved the clock only 18 times since it was set to seven minutes to midnight in 1947. The clock has been closer to midnight, two minutes away after the Eisenhower administration tested a nuclear bomb in 1953. But it is also a long way from its most optimistic setting, at 17 minutes to midnight in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Today’s change was the first since 2002.

The organization cited North Korea’s recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, a renewed emphasis on military uses and proliferation of nuclear weapons and the presence of 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia. The organization added global warming to its concerns, saying in its statement, “the dangers of climate change are nearly as dire as those of nuclear weapons.”