Year: 2008
In Case You’re Not Scared Yet …
The Bush administration continues to issue vague information alleging that al Qaeda is still trying to kill all of us. This, despite the fact that Iran supposedly has been trying to develop nuclear capabilities for a decade with no success. But hey, a bunch of guys living in caves in Pakistan could really be a threat to everybody living anywhere near Times Square:
Two high-level government intelligence experts testified Wednesday that al Qaeda is intent on attacking the United States with a nuclear weapon but has not developed a nuclear device.
In a hearing, Charles Allen, chief intelligence officer for the Homeland Security Department, said there is no doubt that al Qaeda wants a nuclear weapon. But, he told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, “I do not believe that any terrorist organization currently has developed a nuclear device.” He said, however, that this capability “could change drastically” with the recruitment of people with knowledge of nuclear materials and design.
‘We do not yet know when and where they intend to strike us next,” Mowatt-Larssen testified, “but past experience strongly suggests that they are seeking an attack more spectacular than 9/11.’
— Rolf Mowatt-LarssenHis testimony was buttressed by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, director of the office of intelligence and counterintelligence of the Energy Department. Before Sept. 11, 2001, he said, many in the intelligence community believed it was too hard for terrorists to develop a nuclear bomb.
“We should not, however, assume that the technology of a nuclear weapon is beyond the capability of a terrorist group,” Mowatt-Larssen said. “A terrorist group needs only to produce a nuclear yield once to change history.”
Both experts plan to testify before the committee later Wednesday to discuss classified material. “We do not yet know when and where they intend to strike us next,” Mowatt-Larssen testified, “but past experience strongly suggests that they are seeking an attack more spectacular than 9/11.”
Mowatt-Larssen said a global effort must be undertaken to get nuclear materials off the black market and stop global trafficking in them. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., summed up the testimony of both men as sobering.
Matthew Bunn, a nuclear exert at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, said that nuclear stockpile security in Russia “has improved dramatically in the past 15 years” but called for more global nuclear security. He too warned of the threat from a terrorist group.
“This is a real danger,” he said. Homeland Security Department’s Allen said any terrorist nuclear bomb would lack the sophistication of one developed by a country and be of unknown yield. But, he warned, “A nuclear device of any yield could produce thousands of casualties, significant damage to the infrastructure and render large areas uninhabitable.”
Similarly, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs ranking member Susan Collins of Maine supported that assessment, saying that a 10-kiloton nuclear device in Manhattan’s Times Square at noon would result immediately in the loss of half a million lives.
10 Percent of Americans Still Think Obama is a Muslim
There was a movie that came out a couple years ago called “Idiocracy.” The premise was that because stoopid people procreate at an alarmingly faster rate than the smart people, the United States was turned into a nation of drooling idiots over several generations. The movie was a comedy, but sometimes I think it’s already really happened, which ain’t so funny.
According to a Pew Center poll released today, one in 10 Americans still persists in thinking that presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is a Muslim. This, despite his frequent references to his Christian beliefs and the recent highly publicized flap over perceived anti-American comments made by the pastor of his CHRISTIAN church.
While a majority — 53 percent — identify Obama as a Christian, 16 percent of conservative Republicans, 16 percent of white evangelical Protestants and 19 percent of rural Americans believe the Illinois senator is Muslim.
About a third of Americans said they don’t know what Obama’s religious beliefs are, and 9 percent of that group said it’s because they’ve heard different information about his faith.
Perhaps it’s due to a kind of stunned disbelief on the part of the less progressive among us that we’ve actually reached a point where there’s a real possibility that a black man or a white woman could become the next president of the United States.
For many in this country, the cognitive dissonance caused by housing that thought inside their cranium makes it possible to believe that we’re also choosing between a Methodist and a Muslim for president. I mean, if the first “absurd” alternative is possible, then the second must be reasonable, too. Right?
Quote du Jour
Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
— John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), ) influential Canadian-American economist
When Will Someone Ask Meghan McCain About Her Dad’s Affairs, Mother’s Drug Abuse?
When Bill Clinton was asked on MTV during the 1992 presidential campaign whether he wore boxers or briefs, he could have done the world a favor by answering, “None of your business.”
If there ever was a question that deserved to be ducked, it’s “What do you think about your dad’s extramarital affair?”
In the 2008 campaign, Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, now 27, has now been asked twice to provide a justification for her father’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, and has been widely criticized for answering, “None of your business.”
Critics, including my colleague Trish, say that because Chelsea is out on the hustings as a surrogate for her mother, she should have had an answer prepared for this humiliating question. Knowing the Clintons, it’s likely that “none of your business” was the answer the focus groups liked best.
But why should any philanderer’s daughter be asked to answer for her old man’s inability to keep his zipper shut? If there ever was a question that deserved to be ducked, it’s “What do you think about your dad’s extramarital affair?”
If we’re going to adopt this new level of accountability, it ought to be applied fairly. So it has to be fair game to ask John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, who also campaigns for her father, about his long-ago adulteries and more recent relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman; her mother Cindy McCain’s drug problem, which drove her to steal opoids from the medical charity she established; and the involvement of both her parents in the Keating Five Scandal back in 1989.
Right. Don’t hold your breath.
Pensito Review News Roundup for April 1, 2008
Howard Dean has announced the Democratic National Committee will pay to hold the Florida primary again, and this time, candidates will be allowed to visit the state before the voting. Dean said the primary will be held Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2008.
Sen. Hillary Clinton says she’s quitting her campaign and will join Sen. Joe Lieberman as an “Independent Democrat.” The new party so far has two members, but plans spin-off chapters, including one headed by Ralph Nader, the “Independent Green Party,” and one led by Ron Paul, the “Independent Libertarian Party.”
Sen. Barack Obama, explaining his recent chronologically challenged anecdotes in a speech in Selma, Ala., last week, claimed he was suffering from “a temporary superabundance of audacity and a dearth of hope.”
At a press conference today Sen. John McCain gave a clearer idea of his proposed timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq: “When I learn the difference between Shiites and Sunnis, we’ll leave.”
Karen Thurman, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, announced today that the party was changing its name to #@&%$ Florida Democrats!, which is how the organization has been referred to since last fall by Democrats in other parts of the nation.
In his ongoing efforts to encourage more tourists to visit Florida, Gov. Charlie Crist unveiled a plan today to make some of the state’s more oddly named cities and attractions more palatable to visitors. Among the examples were Tallahassee, which will now be called Talltown; Orlando, which now will be Mouseville; Lake Okeechobee will become Lake OK, and the Everglades will be known as Screwed.
Ashley Dupre, the high-priced call girl responsible for the resignation of New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer, explained in an interview today exactly why she was paid up to $4,000 a night to sleep with Spitzer: “So I wouldn’t giggle when he took his pants off.”
Spitzer’s replacement, Gov. David Paterson, who has admitted dabbling in drugs in his 20s and having a series of affairs while married, explained how he, a legally blind African-American man, could actually manage to have a series of affairs: “Barry White, baby,” he said.
Happy April Fool’s Day, everybody!
Quote du Jour
No matter who wins, the people are always worsted in an election.
— Ed Howe (1853-1937), American author
A Super Delegate Primary in June?
And now, for something completely different: Gov. Phil Bredesen (D-Tenn.) has thought up a way to end the Democratic primary race. According to Politico, he wants the super delegates to hold their own convention after the state primaries are over but before the regular convention in August. Huh?
If it happens, people in the other 48 states can find out what it feels like to vote in Florida and Michigan: ignored
He was in Washington this week to promote his idea for holding a “superdelegate primary†in June, in which the 795 party bigwigs would gather to hear one last time from Clinton and Obama before casting a final vote.
Rather than allow the horse-trading and bloodletting go on all summer, he’d get it over with during a two-day business meeting in a neutral, easily reached city like Dallas.
“Invite the candidates to come and talk if they want, and then literally call the roll,†he explained. “We should not go through the summer and have a divided and exhausted Democratic Party. The inescapable conclusion is: OK, you’ve got to find some way to bookend and bring it to closure earlier. How do you do that? Do it in June rather than August.”
The idea is gaining traction, the site says. If it happens, people in the other 48 states can find out what it feels like to vote in Florida and Michigan: ignored.
What exactly is the point of the August convention?
Chelsea Still Hasn’t Come Up With Monica Response
Oops, she did it again. The once and possibly future first daughter still hasn’t come up with anything less lame than, “None of your business” in response to people who bring up Monica Lewinsky.
The depressing part of the whole thing is reliving the disappointment we all felt with Bill Clinton, whom we defended — and still do — but who we know really blew it. So to speak.
It also appears evident that none of the Clintons will ever totally emerge from the shadow the episode cast over all their efforts, even the really good ones, going forward.
Iraq P.M. Maliki Declares Basra Operation a ‘Success’ – Time to Bring U.S. Troops Home
Among the multiple, ever-shifiting reasons George Bush has given for keeping U.S. forces in Iraq, the most current rationale is that our soldiers are required because, after five years or so of training, Iraqi troops are useless as peacekeepers.
the only “war” in Iraq is a civil war, and that U.S. forces are there as occupiers, not combatants aligned with either side, the Sunnis or the Shia.
Now Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has declared that forces under his command has successfully taken down a Shi’ite militia uprising in Basra:
[Maliki] says the military operation to crack down against Shi’ite militias in the southern city of Basra was a success.
Mr. Maliki also said Tuesday that his office will recruit 10,000 more troops and take steps to enhance public services in the city.
Iraqi officials said the recent fighting between Shi’ite militias and security forces in the south of the country helped make March the deadliest month for Iraqis since August 2007.
Combined figures from Iraq’s interior, defense and health ministries show nearly 1,100 Iraqi civilians and security personnel were killed last month. That figure is nearly double the number of Iraqi deaths tallied in February.
The March figure includes about 923 civilian deaths.
At least 400 people were killed in the last week during fighting between militants loyal to Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and Iraqi and coalition forces in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra.
This illustrates, first, that the only “war” in Iraq is a civil war, and that U.S. forces are there as occupiers, not combatants aligned with either side, the Sunnis or the Shia.
Despite the Bush-McCain rhetoric, because U.S. troops are not combatants in the Iraq civil war, the United States can neither “win” the civil war, nor can we “surrender” in it.
There are only two only options for the United States occupation forces: Staying or leaving but, again, staying is not the equivalent of “winning,” just as leaving as not equal to “surrender.”
This also illustrates Bush’s true rationale for keeping U.S. in harm’s way — a motivation that is as emblematic of the Bush era as it obscene and vile. Our troops are there, not to ensure security of the American homeland or even U.S. strategic interests in the region, but rather as a means for Bush to prop up his shaky, treacly legacy: “By God, the U.S. didn’t surrender to the terrarists on my watch.”
