Today on NPR I heard an officer in Fallujah claim that he had seen no signs of even a single civilian casuality in Fallujah. I guess he didn’t look very hard.
The self-made man
I’ve read this story a few times in the past, and wanted to post it here. Today I saw a pointer to it on another blog:
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised….
So go over there to read the whole thing.
Voting irregularities in Florida
Well, this is interesting. A study done at Berkeley has found inconsistencies in the Florida vote which indicate that electronic voting machines awarded extra votes for Bush at a rate that isn’t consistent with chance. The votes were primarily in heavily Democratic counties. The data and working paper are available online. I really hope this gets some attention in the press.
Berkeley analysis of Fla. electronic voting finds Bush wrongly awarded between 133,000 and 260,000 votes
A study by faculty and graduate students and led by University of California at Berkeley Professor Michael Hout has concluded that President Bush was likely erroneously awarded between 130,000 and 260,000 votes in Florida alone, with 72,000 of them being in the largely Democratic Broward County alone, RAW STORY has learned.
The survey, which is the most comprehensive and detailed analysis of Florida
The Bush tax plan
Well it seems that Bush isn’t going to go for a flat tax or a sales tax after all. Instead, he’s going to cut capital gains taxes again, eliminate the alternative minimum tax, and otherwise shield income for wealthy people. How can he pay for all this without driving the deficit even higher? He plans to increase taxes on the middle class and working poor, by eliminating your tax deduction for state and local taxes, and eliminating the tax deductions businesses can take for providing health care.
Not only does this stick it to working people in favor of the wealthy, one of Bush’s favorite things to do, but it disproportionately hits blue states
Reporting from Iraq
It’s hard getting good news of what exactly is happening in Iraq these days. Here’s a good description of why, and the story of how things have changed over the past year.
Stuck in Fallujah
The New York Times this morning reports that Marine officers say we can’t leave Fallujah now that we’ve cleared out the insurgents, because then the insurgents will come right back. Which is both true and obvious. And while our military is tied down in Fallujah, the insurgents will operate elsewhere, as we have seen in Mosul, Baquba, Ramadi, and Baghdad this past week. We don’t have enough soldiers to occupy the entire country, and we don’t want to be there forever anyway. But the insurgents, who are mostly local people fighting the occupation, are going to keep fighting as long as we are there.
I don’t see an easy way out of this for the U.S. and our military. I don’t see that the situation is going to calm down. We’re trying to train a local Iraqi security force. But when you train a Sunni force, they will refuse to fight against Sunni insurgents. And if you instead bring in Kurdish forces, as we have been doing recently, you risk inflaming sectarian hatred that may lead to full civil war.
If it’s true that the Sunnis are largely going to boycott the January elections, then we’re looking at a permanent insurgent force. Drawing the various factions into the political process is Iraq’s only real hope for stability. But we haven’t been doing too well on the hearts and minds front recently.
Debt ceiling raised
For the third time in as many years, Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling, allowing the government to keep functioning by running up the deficit even further. There was a time when Republicans were seen as the party of limited government and balanced budgets. But no more! They have become the party of no-taxes-but-spend anyway. I call them “red ink Republicans”.
The measure was passed by a nearly straight party-line vote. The new debt ceiling is $8.2 trillion, up from a ceiling of $5.9 trillion when Bush took office.
Oh yeah…
While we’re talking about clemency for DeLay, you might want to note that selling a little bit of marijuana can get you 55 years in jail. Is this a great country or what?
DeLay
I’m not particularly concerned with how the Republicans choose their leadership. These past few years they have proved over and over again that they care nothing for honor, and everything for power. It’s no surprise whatever that they are happy to be led by a possible criminal, and to change their own honorable rules so that he can lead them. After all, he insured the addition of several Republican seats in the House with his probably illegal off-year Texas redistricting plan. I’m not surprised that they want to reward him in his hour of need. But it’s never fun to watch your opponents sink to such a low level.
If you’re interested in learning more about his background, Mother Jones has a thorough review.
Torturing detainees
No, it’s not Guantanamo.
It’s a two-part story at NPR about abuse of illegal immigrants while in the hands of Homeland Security. The prisoners were mostly petty criminals who were supposed to be sent home or to a regular jail. Instead they were beaten and attacked by guard dogs. Listen to the whole thing at the link.