The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: First Half of February 2006 Archive

February 14
Allow me to contribute one original thought about Cheney's hunting accident. I think this tells us a lot. Think about how this was a "canned" hunt, a term new to me, which apparently means the animals are shipped in and released in a confined space. I'm guessing, giving the numbers of quail they killed, that there was no bag limit on private property. Think about the money it takes to have a hunt like this. Now think about the bloodlust of people who would sit in their cars and blast away at birds that can't defend themselves or escape. Now ask yourself what these people would do if given control of the US armed forces. What sort of foreign policy would they produce? Does the answer look a lot like we already have?

OK, one more thought. If the rest of us had told the deputies who came to talk to us after we accidentally shot someone to come back later, we would be met by a combination of scorn and handcuffs, followed probably by an alcohol test and an interview whether we liked it or not. Cheney arranged an interview for later, and got the secret service to tell the deputies at the door to go away. That's called privilege, and these guys just take it for granted. And to think, Kerry was seen as to aloof for the working class because he windsurfed. At least he did his own windsurfing.

February 7
Look at this quote from Torturer General Alberto Gonzales from yesterday's hearing:

"Think about the reaction, the public reaction that has arisen in some quarters about this program. If the president had authorized domestic surveillance, as well, even though we're talking about Al-Qaida-to-Al-Qaida, I think the reaction would have been twice as great. And so there was a judgment made that this was the appropriate line to draw in ensuring the security of our country and the protection of the privacy interests of Americans."

So Bush will do anything to protect Americans' security, unless the political reaction might be bad. But of course it's the Democrats who politicized the "terrorist surveillance program". Seriously though, if such surveillance would improve security, and that's the only consideration, then shouldn't it be taken? Take up these conservatives who proclaim they have nothing to hide at their word.

Another thought: since Gonzales lied at his confirmation when asked about this surveillance, could he not be lying now about there being no domestic surveillance? If I may indulge some speculation, and it's my blog so I may, Gonzales never did say why they couldn't use FISA except that some paperwork was an inch thick. No Bush apologist has ever said why FISA couldn't be used. Maybe it's because they did listen in on purely domestic calls. I think that's the most likely answer. Less likely but not to be dismissed, some of the spying was on domestic political opponents, just like the good old days of Hoover and Nixon.

Yet another thought for conservatives: you seem to think you don't need your 4th amendment rights when you have nothing to hide, so do you not need the 2nd amendment when you don't own a gun? It seems having a right does not depend upon needing it at the moment.

One last thing that ran through my head as Republicans expressed offense over a MoveOn ad comparing Bush to Nixon. The rehabilitation seems to have failed. All that crap I've heard my whole adult life and adolescence too about how every president did what Nixon but just didn't caught, and he was really good at foreign policy, seems to have been forgotten by Nixon's party. I think we got a glimpse of future scandals, when future troubled presidents (especially illegitimate acting presidents) will express offense at being compared to Bush.

February 5
If you've visited my quotes archive, the archive of the quotes over on the irght after I've replaced them with new ones, you might have noticed one called "other topics". It's gotten rather lengthy, so I've added more specific archives, civil liberties, Katrina, and Culture of Corruption. If you can't find a quote, it probably got moved.

Though the Take the Red Pill Award is nonsense believing religious fundamentalists, I've wondered if I should have included deniers of global warming, who are sometimes as in denial as the people who refuse to believe evolution. An instance comes from something of a man-bites-dog story. General Electric has come under pressure from an activist shareholder over its environmental policies. That wouldn't surprise me, since through most of the 80's and somelong way into the 90's liberals like me boycotted GE over its production of atomic bombs. The argument was that they were lobbying for more weaons systems and against ending the Cold War. With that background, a shareholder resolution against their environmental policies would be unsurprising except what this shareholder objects to is things like investing in the manufacture of wind turbines. Yes, Steve Milloy, portfolio manager at the Free Enterprise Action Fund, believes global warming is a hoax and doesn't want environmentally friendly investments by GE, which is currently run by a CEO who thinks green technologies will be good for business. According to their web site, activists are bad and they are anti-activist. This sure looks like plain old-fashioined activism to me. But gee, how dare those evil liberals use their shares to advocate for their idea of corporate responsibility. What do they think they are, owners? For those of you who don't know much about stocks, owning stock in a corporation does make you an owner, and you have the right to convince other owners representing a majority of the stock to change corporate poliices. Sadly, that's true even if you think only conservatives should be allowed to own anything and you believe the nonsense about global warming being a fraud. Maybe I need a Take the Green Pill Award.

Now for a real Take the Red Pill Award, to be given to the Muslims threatening death over the cartoons of Muhammad published by Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten. A good background on the story was broadcast today by On the Media. Though I don't share their religious belief that it's blasphemy to portray Muhammad, it's their right to feel offended. It's their right to say they are offended as that is just free speech. They have the right to boycott the newspaper or the other newsppaers that published the cartoons as it's their money, even if I think their ire is sometimes misplaced. They even have the right to boycott all things Danish since it's still their money, and most Muslim countries have little in the way of a free press and so find it impossible to believe the Danish government, and the governments where other papers have published the cartoons, don't control the press. However, they need to take the red pill when they are angry with those who aren't publishing the cartoons to be funny, but to show what the story is about. Above all, there is no excuse for getting violent, like torching embassies and threatening death. It's the usual thing: there's no such thing as sin when you think God is on your side.

February 1
Last night in the minutes before the start of the State of the Union Address, CNN reported reported that Cindy Sheehan had been arrested for displaying a banner. It seemed like a lighter moment. In fact, CNN had it thoroughly wrong. Sheehan had worn a t-shirt with the number of US troops dead in Iraq War II. A banner would block some other spectators' views. A banner requires help. A shirt is a shirt. Seems like a big difference. Considering the spectacle her arrest and removal must have made, how does anyone get that wrong? Couldn't someone at CNN have asked how she displayed a banner single-handed and maybe spoken to someone who saw it instead of taking the word of someone who apparently lied? I recall at the moment that it seemed the reporters on camera were taking it somewhat lightly. I didn't see the rest of their coverage so I hope they corrected it, and I couldn't find a transcript nor have I seen the coverage again, so my impression could be and I hope is wrong, because it sure seemed like they were doing the typical Washington press corps thing of dismissing anyone who isn't commonly found in the corridors of power.

According to Sheehan's account, she was quite roughly handled. Understand, even if you suspect she's exaggerating her account, the bottom line is that someone with a valid ticket was arrested in the gallery of the US House of Representatives for wearing a shirt with a politically sensitive number on it. If you still don't get it, I suggest you reread the First Amendment.

"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.

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