The Raven' s Blog, Web Log of Eric Ferguson: Second Half of September 2005 Archive

September 28
Am I the only who finds the indictment of Tom DeLay feels a bit like Al Capone getting charged with tax evasion? Here's the indictment. Don't get me wrong. It's good it finally happened, but it seems pretty low on the list of the crap he's pulled. I don't understand how congressional Republicans have so little integrity left that he can have any public office at all after being spanked by the ethics committee three times. Laundering some campaign funds seems small by comparison to gerrymandering the Texas US House districts and and protecting the sweatshop owners of Saipan. Maybe this is the only thing technically illegal. So be it. I just remind readers that the Republicans managed a distraction when corruption was the issue of the 2002 elections (Enron is the issue? Oh look, we need to vote for war on Iraq RIGHT NOW). We mustn't let them do it this time, and they will try. My guess is we'll have to bomb Syria RIGHT NOW, or there will be a federal constitutional amendment on gay marriage.

As long as I'm putting things together, the corruption of DeLay, Frist et al might look like a separate issue from election reform, which I write about often, but it isn't. If you've been reading, you know I think the problem isn't technical but rather deliberate cheating. It's the same people. The people stealing elections and stealing money are the same people. They are two manifestations of the same corruption.

Is Michael Brown a scapegoat? He really is pretty awful, but that just makes him a more plausible scapegoat, especially with such telling quotes as "I think it's wrong for the federal government to be in the ice business, providing ice so I can keep my beer and Diet Coke cool". His boss, homeland secretary Michael Chertoff, screwed up too and was just as oblivious, besides participating in the lie that there were newspaper headlines saying "New Orleans dodged a bullet." He should have gotten a chewing too. Then how about former FEMA head and the guy who picked Brown, Jim Albaugh, and has reacted to Katrina by enriching himself and his buddies. Above all, don't forget the acting president who picked Chertoff, who picked Albaugh, who accepted the recommendation of Brown, and who ultimately stopped the levees being improved.

The weird thing is I actually felt sorry for Brown. I figured it must feel awful to know you've screwed up that bad and everyone hates you for it. There wasn't a lot of sympathy, because he could have refused a job he knew he was unqualified for and he couldn't be bothered to pay attention, but how unimaginably awful about himself he must have felt...so I imagined. Then he "admits" the mistake of not realizing how badly Louisiana was doing things. He was such an arrogant bastard that he seemed like, well, a modern day Republican leader...which I suppose as a high government official he was. Now even if there is some scapegoating going on, I hope they prosecute him for lying to Congress, the legislative equivalent of perjury.

By the way, in case anyone still thinks this is a one-time screw-up, it turns out things aren't going great after Rita either.

September 26
Let's see, we haven't had a Take the Red Pill Award for while. So, here's an award to William Buckingham, a member of the Dover, PA, school board. Taking the side for requiring the teaching of intelligent design, he apparently saw no problem with imposing his faith on the curriculum, saying, "Nearly 2,000 years ago, someone died on a cross for us. Shouldn't we have the courage to stand up for him?" That's right, evolutionists, who include every scientist on the planet except a few religious fundamentalists, aren't trying to explain the natural history of life on Earth, they're trying to attack Jesus --- whom many of them believe in. How about this for a compromise: science classes must teach the biblical view of science, and religion classes must teach the absurdity of virgin births. Seriously, I'm not saying intelligent design and it's forerunner, creationism, shouldn't be taught in science class, because students are going to hear about them so they might as well get the straight scoop. However, that means they won't be taught as equally valid theories, but as what they are, belief systems that depend on faith and in no sense qualify as science. That is of course not what Buckingham was getting at, so as a proxy for the fundamentalists on the Dover school board, he gets the Take the Red Pill Award.

September 21
There was an item buried in the inside pages a couple days ago I would like to call attention to. A French soldier was killed in Afghanistan. They are there you may recall to help us after 911. So, I have a question for those of you who think bigotry against the French is socially acceptable, particularly the remarks indicating the French give up fast in war, "surrender monkeys" and such: would you be to say those things to the soldier's family? You wouldn't? Then maybe you ought to think before you say them at all. More here if you read French. If you don't, try Babelfish.

Alberto "Torture Memo" Gonzales has engendered some derision by ordering the FBI to focus on pornography, including an agent being quoted saying, "I guess this means we've won the war on terror." This is adult porn, not child porn. I have a thought. Could Gonzales be trying to make the religious right happy before being nominated for the Supreme Court? He must know this move generally looks like misplaced priorities, but will make the right constituency happy. He needs unanimous conservative support, because the left will oppose the man behind the torture policy much more than we have Roberts. The man should be a defendant, not a judge.

Let's not jump to the conclusion Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Republican from Tennessee, in case you're new here) committed insider trading. It could be pure coincidence he sold all his stock and that of his wife and children as well right before the company, Hospital Corporation of America, announced an earnings report that caused the stock to drop. Just because this company made his family fortune and made up his personal fortune, that's no reason to assume he knew what was going on. He didn't, after all, know exactly how much stock he had. $10 million? $20 million? Who knows! Come on, it's not a huge amount, at least not when you're as wealthy as, say, Bill Frist. Moreover, it be grossly unfair to assume he had inside information just because his brother is a director. The idea that Frist was following closely the company his family founded and on which his extensive personal wealth depended is just ludicrous.

OK, maybe he did it, but maybe despite the extensive holding of stocks and long and deep inside connection, he just didn't know securities laws. After all, despite being a doctor, he diagnosed Terri Schiavo from a video, got it completely wrong, then denied it as if, as Jon Stewart said, "Not only do I believe Senator Bill Frist may be a terrible doctor, I think he doesn't realize C-SPAN has cameras." This was after being unwilling to AIDS can't be caught from tears and sweat. So maybe he just isn't that smart.

OK, I was being sarcastic, but I would point out that the Martha Stewart investigation was launched on less evidence for a crime only a fraction of the size. This might even get Frist up to a DeLay level.

September 17
If you're still in any doubt the Bush administration completely screwed up after Katrina as well as ignoring warnings about the levees for years before, then you ought to hear it directly from people in FEMA as they tell how they tried to get Brown and Chertoff to do something in the days before the hurricane hit.

So a question for those of you still backing Bush: what will it take for you to admit he has to go? You've seen him lie, you've seen him screw up big time, you've seen he's an idiot, you've seen he surrounds himself with people who are robbing us blind --- so what are you waiting for? Does he have to get caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy? Yesterday was declared by the acting president to be a national day of prayer. How about a national day of responsibility? We can celebrate by demanding that Bush fire Chertoff and then show that accepting responsibility means something by resigning.

Today would be particularly appropriate for a day of responsibility because this is also Constitution Day. Let us mark it telling our members of congress that investigating the president is part of their responsibilities regardless of party, and refusing to investigate Bush will have negative effects on their reelection. And you do have to tell them. You can't just sit and grumble. Tell your Democratic members to stand up to the Republicans, and tell your Republican members that refusing to investigate corruption and incompetence within their own party will cost them votes.

"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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