The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: First Half of August 2005 Archive

August 13
Perhaps the publicity from driving past Cindy Sheehan on his way to a GOP fundraiser was too much, so next time he left the ranch Bush took a helicopter. I wonder if he got close enough to see that the protestors now number in three figures.

I'm not necessarily endorsing the call for immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, because there's actually a lot of sense in the notion that such a withdrawal will make things worse. However, the Bush Administration has shown itself hopelessly incompetent and corrupt, and some good result in Iraq would seem to hinge upon the replacement of this hopeless administration, whether the policy is withdrawal, the current course, or anything else. If the practical need for new management isn't enough to impeach Bush, then when we look at the lies Bush has been caught telling, a simple sense of justice requires his removal. It looks hopeless while the Republican majority in Congress is so corrupt itself and refuses to investigate anything, but at some point even that crooked bunch must act. Though there is clearly enough for any honest Congress to be fully engaged in investigations right now, perhaps they are waiting for evidence Bush knew about the Plame leak while he was denying knowing, perhaps even in advance. Even DeLay, Frist, and Co. will have to act then, and if they don't, they'll need every touchscreen voting machine they can foist on voters in order to keep a majority.

While we're thinking of crooked congressmen, Rep. Mark Kennedy, R-MN, has been caught altering news articles he posted on his web site. Every politician selects favorable quotes and if the quotes aren't altered or taken out of context, that's fine. However, Kennedy routinely pretended he was posting the entire article, though he only used selected passages and thereby changed the meaning of the articles. He's going to start linking to full texts, but two of Kennedy's Democratic opponents, Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar, and child welfare advocate and Kennedy's 2004 opponent Patty Wetterling, were already doing so. So just a reminder, when you elect Republicans to the US House, you put the likes of Kennedy in the majority.

So long as I've mentioned Patty Wetterling, I appeal to her to consider dropping the Senate campaign and running again for the 6th district seat. She'd probably make a decent senator and she would have a shot against Kennedy, but as close as she came against an incumbent in a Republican district, I wonder if the combination of one campaign's experience and an open seat wouldn't give her a good chance of capturing that seat. She would be the strongest DFL candidate, and probably the only one with a good chance of winning. There's a chance next year for a big turnover in the House, between the history that says the president's party does badly in his second term midterm election, the disillusionment with the acting president, and the rampant Republican scandals. 911 whistleblower Colleen Rowley is challenging a Republican incumbent in the 2nd district, and Iraq and Afghan wars veteran Tim Walz is doing the same in the 1st. I hope all the candidates have learned from Paul Hackett's campaign that forthrightly getting after the acting president can work.

August 12
If you want to see a pretty direct connection between lobbying and results, look at the new laws regarding ATVs (all terrain vehicles) passed in the deal to end the state government shutdown. ATVs, which are accused of tearing up wild areas, especially in the northern part of Minnesota, are almost unrestricted north of US Highway 2, which includes two-thirds of state-owned land. They're supposed to be restricted to certain trails, but now they can go anywhere that's not explicitly posted saying they can't. Pull out a map and look at the size of the area. How likely is it prohibited areas can be posted? That's the strength of the ATV lobby. Just to make the connection, last spring Polaris, one of the big manufacturers, lent Gov. Gambling (that's Tim Pawlenty, for those of you not from Minnesota) an ATV to use. He caused $2500 worth of damage in an accident, but what do you know, Polaris repaired it for free, essentially handing a gift to the governor. If they had just handed Pawlenty the same amount in cash, that would be called a bribe. But since they didn't make him pay for the damage he caused like any of the rest of us would have to do if we damaged a borrowed vehicle, it's no big deal. Unless, that is, if you're hoping for favorable treatment from someone with influence over state government, like a governor.

In case you thought that was all the largesse Polaris received, they got to participate in Gov. Gambling's JOBZ program, by which this profitable company gets a bunch of government money as a bribe to not leave the state. In today's news, it turns out Polaris competitor Arctic Cat is getting state money too. I'd like to know what the effect would be of putting that money into schools or into loans to small business instead of a big corporation which doesn't need it.

August 10
Go ahead Republicans, conservatives, neo-cons, and propagandizing pundits. Keep smearing Cindy Sheehan. The more you tell lies about a gold star mother, the more the people you've been fooling will realize what you are. The smear about Sheehan changing her story started with Matt Drudge taking some quotes out of context and twisting them. Media Matters traced how it was then picked up by more of the right wing media. That article included a link to the original story being misquoted, so you can see for yourself how these conscienceless crooks operate.

An argument I heard tonight for why the acting president shouldn't meet with her is then he would have to meet with everyone who has lost someone in Iraq. The two thoughts that jump to mind are first, that wasn't an issue when the meeting was meant to make Bush look good; second, maybe if national leaders had to meet with every immediate family of every soldier killed in the wars they start, they would think harder about starting them. It's one thing when other people bear the sacrifices, quite another when you might have to spend your time (vacation or otherwise) with them. How about we put this requirement only on those who start wars, and then the shear impracticality of meeting every grieving mother, wife, etc. will make starting wars unappealing.

August 4
I want all of you who blithely blow off the lies that got us into Iraq while having nothing personal at stake to read this moving article in the August 4th Cleveland Plain Dealer. Likewise all of you who claim to support the war while finding excuses for letting other people fight it. Likewise those who think wars are abstract matters of policy. Likewise those who think you have to back the president in wartime no matter what. Maybe especially, those who think your bit of patriotism lets you uncritically accept a bunch of crap about spreading freedom and democracy need to read about the real cost of what you've supported --- a cost borne by other people.

I won't suggest for a moment the sad story of how a mother begged her son not to go only to see the nightmare fulfilled will instantly change your mind about anything. I just ask you to ask yourself if you've believed things without thinking them through, if you've trusted leaders who have not earned your trust, and respected leaders who deserve no respect. When you read Paul Schroeder, suddenly turned into a gold star father, say, "To honor him, I no longer can sit still, just keeping quiet and being politically correct," ask whether simplistic patriotism isn't a particularly pernicious form of political correctness.

Anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church demonstrators at Sgt. Bryan Opskar's funeral -- he was killed by an IED Following up from July 31st, I hope the people I addessed the predeeding paragraphs to are more capable of reasoning than the lunatics who picketed Bryan Opskar's memorial service in my wife's hometown of Princeton. They managed to miss the funeral in Moorhead, but greeted those attending the memorial in Princeton with signs saying "Thank God for IEDs". Opskar was killed by an IED.

August 3
Winning is better of course, but coming close can sometimes feel good. Specifically I refer to Paul Hackett coming shockingly close in yesterday's special election to fill a US House seat in a safe Republican district. Some lessons to learn from it:

Speculation about whether large scale help from the national Democratic party would have meant more if it came early on shows that such an effort in these special elections has to be made just so we don't wonder if something was left untried. Maybe it wouldn't have helped, but now we'll never know. Might as well try. After all, ever since Kerry "lost", we've been wondering what would have happened if he had used every tool in the box, like Bush reading "The Pet Goat" and what was already known about the Plame leak.
The first point leads to the second. Hackett hit Bush hard rhetorically, and drew flak for it, but it looks like it at worst didn't hurt, and maybe helped. The grassroots Democrats have been saying since at least the 2000 campaign our candidates need to stop playing patsy and say what needs saying. Hackett's comment about his tough talk, "Meant it, said it, stand by it," should be the guideline. You can speak the blunt truth and it helps.
Ohio's Republicans have had serious ethics problems which isn't the case in all states, but it is in some, and very much so on the federal level. This works as an issue. Don't leave this tool in the box.
Jean Schmidt was regarded by some as a weak candidate, but she was spewing the same crud as other Republicans. Most are just repeating the propaganda, not coming up with it. Hitting back like Hackett did works.
Maybe it takes extraordinary circumstances for safe districts to vote for the other party, but it happens, and we can't miss the opportunities. I refer not only to any other special elections that might happen, but 2006 is a midterm election in a president's second term, which has always been awful for the president's party except in 1998. Add in the scandals embroiling both the White House and Congress, and there's a chance to win some red areas.
Think long term. Some people who reflexively vote Republican must have switched, and more must be thinking about it. If Democrats are as willing to engage as Hackett was, we might move voters for a long time to come.

Fellow liberals, stop harping an Bush's ample vacation time. We don't want this guy working hard. Negligence in pursuit of bad policy is no vice.

The acting president's remarks on intelligent design have put the issue back in the news for a while. I generally don't link to other blogs as a credibility thing: blogs linking to each other as sources gets rather circular. I'm making an exception here because a blogger on Daily Kos has explained how intelligent design promoters debate and how to counter it, tactics as well as facts. I'm not so sure about calling them "flat-earthers" as a name, but I can see saying, "You keep calling us atheists, secularists, ... What if I described you as flat-earthers, even if that's not what you believe, just to characterize your aversion to science?"

See the archives for earlier entries.

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who successfully prosecuted Nazis at Nuremberg for the crime of aggressive war, thereby establishing the precedent that starting a war is, in and of itself, a war crime.

"A refusal to look back inevitably means moving forward in blindness."
Philip Alston, the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, on the resistance of the Obama administration to investigating human rights abuses by the Bush administration.

"Why is it that strong women are so often called bullies and ballbreakers, while strong, opinionated men are often called, simply, Justice Scalia."
Salon editor Joan Walsh, on the bigoted attacks on Sonia Sotomayor already on the day of her announcement.

"In Minnesota, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has made military ballot protection a key priority of his Department. The result is that twice as many military ballots are actually cast, and half as many are rejected, as the national average in 2006."
The National Defense Committee, in an article on their web site praising Minnesota's efforts to encourage absentee voting by military personnel stationed overseas.

"We're seeing massive resistance to the cramdown proposal. That's a proposal to allow bankruptcy judges to reschedule a mortgage on a primary residence. They're fighting this thing tooth and nail. Now the fact is, the people fighting it are the last people who should get the ear of anyone. And it goes to show me they haven't really learned any lessons. A lot of these folks--large banks, Wall Street firms--they have the attitude that "Heads I win, tails you lose." No matter what happens, we always get ours."
Rep. Keith Ellison, on how the bailed out banks are fighting against bankruptcy reform.

''Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,. Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.''
The late --- and correct --- Paul Wellstone, expressing opposition to repealing the law that prevented financial corporations from entering other types of financial business, like preventing commercial banks from becoming investment banks. This repeal was a large part of making the (collapsing) conglomerates possible.

"The facts revealed reflect the way the U.S. government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture. He was being told he would never leave Guant�namo Bay unless he promised never to discuss his torture, and never sue either the Americans or the British to force disclosure of his mistreatment."
Reprieve Director Clive Stafford Smith, speaking about a British court's ruling that the Bush administration tried to get Mohamed to plead guilty to something, anything, and keep quiet about his treatment as a condition of release.

"We spend hours and hours and hours arguing over $10 million amendments on the floor of the Senate, but there has been no discussion about who has been receiving this $3 trillion."
Sen. Bernie Sanders. I-VT, on the mostly unreported spending by the Federal Reserve to prop up the big financial corporations.

"The AIG scandal is significant and has resonated so powerfully because it is a microscope that enables the public to see what and who has wreaked the destruction that threatens their security and future and, most important of all, to realize that these practices haven't ended and the perpetrators haven't been punished. The opposite is true: those who caused the crisis continue to exert control over what happens and continue to have huge amounts of public money transferred in order to enrich them."
Glenn Greenwald, explaining why the AIG bonus scandal is both symbolic and important.

"Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
Attorney General John Ashcroft, during a principals meeting about torture methods.

"There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age.

A review of the literature suggests that, to the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking about the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales." Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center, who surveyed scientific research from 1965-1979 and showed that contrary to what climate change deniers keep asserting, there was no consensus on global cooling. That means the point that climate scientists must be wrong now because they were wrong then is itself based on a false assumption.

"We do not know where George Will is getting his information, but our data shows that on February 15, 1979, global sea ice area was 16.79 million sq. km and on February 15, 2009, global sea ice area was 15.45 million sq. km. Therefore, global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979. This decrease in sea ice area is roughly equal to the area of Texas, California, and Oklahoma combined.

It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts."
statement on the web site of University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, responding to an assertion by global warming denier George Will that they said sea ice area is the same as 1979.

"It has often and confidently been asserted, that man's origin can never be known. But ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."
Charles Darwin, whose 200th birthday is coming up on February 12.

"The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events. That's just what creationists say can't happen."
evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, commenting on an experiment that was able to observe a mutation that changed one species into another.

Quotes Archives