One Year and Counting

Lost amid the coverage of the Presidential election is that we hit a milestone this weekend. We now only have one year left of the worst President in history. When I look at the list of potential Presidents, I can't think of any (ok, maybe Huckabee) that would be worse than the current occupant.

This Presidency has been so incredibly bad, that Republicans no longer defend him.

I could list out the constant incompetence that they have displayed over 7 years but most of that is old news. Upon reelection in 2004, Bush stated that he won political capital and he intended to use it. During the last three years since he made those remarks, I can not think of one accomplishment that he can point to.

The next President is going to be faced with some extremely serious issues that will need to be addressed quickly. The new President will face a recession that could be the worst of my lifetime, an accelerated trend on global warming, a national debt that is spiraling out of control, a health care crisis of 50 million uninsured that is bound to grow during the recession, a looming Social Security/Medicare shortfall, a war that shows no signs of ending, and a continuing threat from extremists.

With all of the problems that face us we need a President that is sprinting to the finish line not one that is running out the clock. One year from now I hope we get someone that is going to work hard and address all the things that have been largely ignored for 8 years.

10 Reasons to Vote for a Democrat in 2008

The last election for the first time in my life I voted straight down party lines and voted for all Democrats. I held my nose on a couple, but it was 100% reaction to the direction the Republican Party has taken this country.

The direction the country has taken over the last 6 years under Bush has been nothing short of disastrous. I've put together a list of 10 reasons to vote for a Democrat in 2008. The list is in no particular order.

1. Democratic Presidents tend to govern as centrists while Republicans pander shamelessly to their constituents. Cut the gay marriage, flag burning, censorship and other wedge issues that the Republicans have used to divide the country. Seriously, why isn't their some sort of Stem Cell research funding? 100% pandering to the base.

2. The budget deficit has grown so out of control over the last 8 years, serious actions need to be taken. Republican Presidents have tended to further the deficit through revenue cuts and increased spending. Democrats have tended to be more reform minded contrary to public opinion.

3. Supreme Court is dangerously tilting to the right. Right to chose, Presidential powers, right to privacy, torture, and surveillance hang in the balance.

4. Global Warming and Energy Policy. Republican party has sold out energy policy to their biggest contributors. Consumers have gotten squeezed, oil companies are getting rich and car companies have not been pushed to higher CAFE standards.

5. Health Care costs have gotten so high and unaffordable for both individuals and companies paying them. Having the drug companies practically write the Medicare Prescription Drug plan has produced one of the worst government programs in many years. Expensive to tax payers and inefficient costs. Pandering to corporate interests instead of tax payers has long been a Republican staple.

6. Iraq. Who do you trust to clean up Iraq? Romney, Giuliani, Thompson, McCain? no. The Republican Party has resisted making changes to the policies in Iraq that have failed over the last 5 years. We can't take another 8 years of "more of the same".

7. International credibility. The current crop, especially Rudy, looks to be no different the Bush. We have alienated allies and have lost what could have been a coalition to help fight global terror by failing to use diplomacy.

8. Education. Education is a mess and getting worse. GOP has pushed to regulate schools but not fund them. $10 billion to fund No Child Left Behind is about 5 days of funding for the war in Iraq. As an aside, here is an interesting glimpse into the opportunities afforded by our nations public schools.

9. Immigration needs to be addressed in a fair and rational manner. Basically only two Republicans have shown any leadership on this issue. Surprisingly Bush and McCain have provided some sanity that the rest of the party has lacked. Building a fence only puts a band aid on this head wound. Guest worker program, path to citizenship, as well as national security concerns all need to be addressed. The only thing most Republicans want to talk about is building a fence and deportation. If you thing a "kick em out" policy is going to work, you may want to read this.

10. Tax reform. Nobody wants to pay more taxes, but when a company can set up a PO box in Bermuda and avoid paying $10's of millions of $'s in taxes, there is a problem. If these loopholes exist, companies have obligations to their shareholders to take advantage of them.

Addressing the cap on Social Security tax would keep Social Security funded for the foreseeable future.
Republicans will not address tax issues rationally. Clearly some of these are fairness issues others are just common sense. But Republicans have it in their DNA to immediately dismiss any forms of revenue.

2 years later....

On the right side of my blog, there is a counter that gives an approximation of how much has been spent on Iraq. Yesterday it was $454,000,000,000. I know the oil profits have uet to kick in to off set this, but it seems like a lot of money.

We have all this money to spend overseas, but how about keeping the promise to restore New Orleans. While the government can't solve everyone's problems, what do you need a governement for if they can not get the wheels in motion after a storm wipes out a good portion of the city?

$454,000,0000,000 for Iraq, $6 bil for New Orleans. Maybe Kayne West was right.

From the great thinkers that brought us the Iraq war.....

Last week in my post regarding the resignation of Turd Blossom I commented that when you silence dissent and opposition you get well thought out policies like the Iraq war. This administration has had a scortched earth policy towards opposing points of view just ask Joe Wilson. and Paul O'neil. and Max Cleland. And Richard Clarke. and Bunnatine H. Greenhouse. (yes even bunny)And Colin Powell. And Flynt Leverett. And James E Hansen and the list goes on.

This is a fascinating reading about how the White House keeps the President surrounded by like minded members of his constituency. The actual Advance Manual is a great read

Please note: all my future posts will be done from Gitmo if I can get PC access.


Sic 'em With the Rally Squad
And other tips for dealing with demonstrators from the Presidential Advance Manual.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Monday, Aug. 20, 2007, at 6:36 PM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Late last week, the federal government settled a lawsuit with a pair of Texans who were arrested in 2004 for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts at a Fourth of July event in Charleston, W.Va. That's right, friends, $80,000 (of your taxpayer dollars) will be paid out to Jeff and Nicole Rank, whose suit against Gregory J. Jenkins—former deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House Office of Presidential Advance—has been dismissed.

White House spokesman Blair Jones managed to turn lemons into lemonade with the statement last week that "the parties understand that this settlement is a compromise of disputed claims to avoid the expenses and risks of litigation and is not an admission of fault, liability, or wrongful conduct." This is, of course, vintage Bush, gloriously reminiscent of that Simpsons episode in which Homer arrives late to collect Bart in the pouring rain after soccer practice, then lectures: "I know you're mad at me right now, and I'm kinda mad, too. I mean, we could sit here and try to figure out who forgot to pick up who till the cows come home. But let's just say we're both wrong, and that'll be that."

Because, you see, what the Ranks did wrong was attend an open-to-the-public, taxpayer-sponsored Independence Day speech by the president on the grounds of the state capitol, sporting homemade anti-Bush T-shirts. Their shirts had a red circle and a diagonal bar covering the word Bush. (His said, "Regime change starts at home," on the back; hers said, "Love America, Hate Bush.") The Ranks neither said nor did anything to disrupt the speech, but when they refused to remove their T-shirts, they were, at the direction of White House event staff, handcuffed, booked, photographed, and fingerprinted, charged with trespassing, and held for several hours in jail. (The charges were subsequently dismissed, and the city of Charleston has apologized.) Nicole Rank was also temporarily suspended from her job with FEMA.

The White House suggestion that, hey, both sides did something bad here, distorts one obvious truth: The only bad thing these citizens did was peacefully disagree with the president in an open political forum. And while Rush Limbaugh and Angelina Jolie may be able to get away with talking exclusively to people who worship them, the president should not.

The details of the Rank lawsuit and the cases involving similarly harassed folks are always fascinating: citizens removed from a Bush event in Denver because of an offensive bumper sticker on their car outside ("No More Blood For Oil"); a Tucson student barred from a Bush event for sporting a Young Democrats T-shirt; Wisconsin citizens forced to unbutton their shirts before attending a Bush speech, only to have an attendee wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt ejected from the event. But the best thing to have emerged from the Rank litigation was the official—if heavily redacted—Presidential Advance Manual (dated October 2002), which, although stamped "SENSITIVE" and not to be "duplicated ... replicated ... photocopied or released to anyone outside of the Executive Office of the President, White House Military Office or United States Secret Service," is now posted right here at the ACLU's Web site.

There is so much that is entertaining in the Advance Manual, it's hard to know where to begin. Sure, it's not a surprise anymore that it is official White House policy to use staff to foster "a well-balanced crowd," with well-balanced evidently defined as a subtle melange of those citizens who adore the president and those who revere him. The key to achieving such a balance, according to the manual, lies in "deterring potential protesters from attending events" and "preventing demonstrators." Nor should anyone be surprised that the president is to be shielded from dissent at taxpayer-funded presidential appearances and at "rallies, roundtables and tours" in equal measure. Only those individuals and groups that are "extremely supportive of the Administration" (emphasis theirs) will be seated in the area between the stage and the main camera platform.

The manual cautions that event staff "must decide if the solution would cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone," but it's also full of ingenious ideas for dealing with a flare-up of dissent. Among the White House tactics are the subcontracting of censorship to event "rally squads" composed of helpful "college/young republican organizations, local athletic teams, and fraternities/sororities." (What, no mathletes?) These obliging rally squads can then "use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform." The use of a "long sheet banner ... in strategic areas around the site" is similarly smiled upon. Lest you believe that the Big Brother sheet represents the full extent of the speech suppression, however, the manual provides that, "As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event."

The Advance Manual's finest moments come in its urgent, earnest drive to protect not just the television cameras but also the president himself from the ugliness of the dread "demonstrators." Certainly, "if it is determined that the media will not see or hear" demonstrators, event staff can ignore them. But event staff must involve themselves in "designating a protest area preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route." In other words, all this suppression of dissent isn't just to create a puppet show for the cameras. It's also about sock puppets for the president, who—if he could just be shielded from the mean T-shirts—might still believe his approval ratings soar into the mid-90s. The Ranks' peaceful protest at the West Virginia state capitol somehow became an act of "trespassing" only because the president was there.

It's disturbing enough to learn from the Advance Manual that the White House has adopted an official policy of shouting down or covering up dissenting viewpoints with large sheets in order to deceive Americans at home into believing the president is universally adored. But that this official policy also exists to protect the tender sensitivities of the president himself is beyond belief.

George W. Bush is certainly entitled to choose his White House advisers, attorneys general, counselors, friends, and pets based solely on the their inability to tell him no. The rest of us have increasingly come to question the wisdom of such insularity. We just can't do it in his presence.

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.

White House Advance Manual

Aurora from Space

Astronomy Picture of the Day
Pictures published daily by NASA. Some good, some blah, some incredible. Worth exploring the archive on a slow day.


The picture above:
Aurora from Space
Credit: Don Pettit, ISS Expedition 6, NASA
Explanation: From the ground, spectacular auroras seem to dance high above. But the International Space Station (ISS) orbits at nearly the same height as many auroras, sometimes passing over them, and sometimes right through them. Still, the auroral electron and proton streams pose no direct danger to the ISS. In 2003, ISS Science Officer Don Pettit captured the green aurora, pictured above in a digitally sharpened image. From orbit, Pettit reported that changing auroras appeared to crawl around like giant green amoebas. Over 300 kilometers below, the Manicouagan Impact Crater can be seen in northern Canada, planet Earth.

Going Green

My wife is trading in her 9 year old Volvo while it still has some value left. It is limping to the finish line. We have been shopping for cars for about two months and were prepared to make a decision today to buy a Toyota Highlander Hybrid. While we were waiting to see the sales person on the Highlander, my wife decided to test drive a Prius.
She couldn't have been more pleased. She test drove the Prius and loved it. Handled great, had plenty of zip, and she liked the style of it. She likes the style, I like the fuel economy.
Here's a couple of fun facts on the Prius gas mileage:
The Prius would use only about 180 gallons of gas to do 10000 miles of driving. With my Murano's 21 gallon tank that would be 9 fillups in a year. With the Prius 12 gallon tank, its about 15 fill ups.
To drive from Boston to Orlando it would take about 25 gallons.
Round trip Boston to New York and back on 8 gallons.
The carbon produced by driving the Prius 10,000 miles is 1.62 tons. This compares ro about 3.5 tons for the average sedan.

The War on Water

Recently San Francisco Mayor made headlines by banning public buildings from buying bottled water or even water coolers. His actions were closesly followed by Salt Lake City, Utah which enacted a similar ban. The Mayor's reasoning is that 1 billion water bottles end up in California land fills each year. He reasoned that tests show that SF's tap water was far better than the bottled water.

Recently on a business trip, my colleague mentioned the ban on bottled water to someone who was from Califonia. His response was an over the top lecture on how bottled water was destroying the world.

Since losing over 100 lbs and giving up soda two years ago, I must admit my drink of choice has been water (other than coffee). All of my home consumption is tap water from the fridge, but I do have several bottles of water during the week. Am I ready for a complete ban on my bottled water cosnumption? No. There are times when buying bottled water beats the alternatives, but I will be more concientions when making choices at work or at the gym.