US Using UN Backdoor to Get Iraqi SOFA*

Posted on November 3, 2008 by RagBlog

Iraqi women pass U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Tony Carter, 34,
from Cross, S.C. as he patrols in Mosul.

U.S. weighs U.N. option to remain in Iraq: Shifts strategy after Baghdad crosses ‘red lines’ in proposal
By Nicholas Kralev / November 3, 2008

The Bush administration is looking to the U.N. Security Council to extend a mandate for U.S. troops to remain in Iraq beyond Dec. 31 – a move that would require Iraqi government cooperation but not Iraqi acceptance of a bilateral accord with Washington.

The shift in strategy follows the Iraqi government’s submission last week of several proposed changes a draft status of forces agreement (SOFA) being negotiated with the U.S.

Several of the proposed amendments, U.S. officials said, “crossed red lines.”

“A Security Council extension is our fallback option,” one official said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. “Our preference is to have a status of forces agreement, and there were clear compromises in the draft on both sides, but the Iraqis are asking for things that no U.S. president can agree to.”

U.S. officials declined to detail the disagreements, but State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called them “numerous.”

“We are working through all of those, trying to put a lot of thought into how to respond to them,” Mr. McCormack told reporters Friday.

Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi exile who works as a consultant for the American Friends Service Committee in Washington and closely monitors Arabic transcripts from the Iraqi parliament, said the Iraqi demands include:

– Naming the final document, “Agreement on Complete U.S. Withdrawal from Iraq.”

– Allowing Iraqi officials to open and monitor U.S. military mail.

– Giving Iraqi courts the authority to decide whether they or U.S. authorities will try American soldiers accused or committing crimes while off duty.

– An outright ban on raids outside Iraq by U.S. forces based there – a demand apparently prompted by the recent U.S. raid on a suspected al Qaeda site inside Syria.

In addition, at least three Iraqi politicians, including former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, have called for the Arabic version of the document to be revised so it matches the English version, Mr. Jarrar said.

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators reached the draft security accord last month, calling for U.S. forces to leave Iraqi cities by June 30 and combat troops to exit by the end of 2011, unless requested to stay.

Iraqi officials, however, faced domestic opposition and submitted a list of proposed changes to the draft. The Bush administration is not expected to respond until after Tuesday’s presidential election.

A 2003 a U.N. resolution provides the legal basis for the U.S. military presence, and the resolution expires Dec. 31. If nothing is done, U.S. troops would be forced to suspend most military and reconstruction operations in Iraq, and remain on their bases.

Moreover, it would leave future U.S. deployments entirely up to the next American president. In describing prospects for an appeal to the Security Council, the U.S. official said that Russia has made clear it will not exercise its veto.

But in discussing that possibility, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that the request to the Security Council would have to come from the Iraqi government.

“We’ll support Iraq’s request to the U.N. Security Council if the Iraqi government asks for the mandate of the current international military presence to be extended,” Mr. Lavrov said recently, the RIA news agency reported.

The U.N. option appears the most realistic at this time, given the upcoming change of administration in Washington and Iraq’s own elections next year, diplomats and analysts said.

“It’s the diplomatic equivalent of kicking the can down the road,” said Michael Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research.

Kim Holmes, vice president of the Heritage Foundation and assistant secretary of state for international organizations during President Bush’s first term, said the Iraqis “are thinking they may get a better deal” if Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama is elected president.

“They could welcome an extension of the U.N. mandate,” he said. “Postponing an agreement would avoid making some hard political decisions for them.”

But Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, warned that the Iraqis “are playing with fire.”

“If Iraqis aren’t careful, they will hand Obama a rationale for a premature departure on a golden platter, assuming he wins Tuesday,” he said. “Even a sense of Iraqi ingratitude could be enough to trigger a decision to start marching brigades out at the rate of one to two a month, as promised, early in 2009.”

The administration has been trying to pressure Baghdad to sign the agreement by threatening to cut millions of dollars in reconstruction and other aid.

After the New Year, U.S. forces “will have no legal basis for operating in Iraq” if nothing is done, and that would be “disastrous” for security in the country, said a State Department official, who also requested anonymity.

“I don’t think the Iraqis fully realize the consequences” of an immediate U.S. withdrawal, he said, adding that many officials and government facilities would lose their U.S. protection, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Kelly Hearn contributed to this report.

Source / Washington Times

The Rag Blog

* SOFA = Status of Forces Agreement

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Paul Krugman on the Republican Rump : Hard Right All That’s Left

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Anger from the Republican right: Gayle Quinnell who calls Barack Obama an Arab during town hall meeting, in Lakeville, Minn. on Oct. 10, 2008. Photo by Jim Money / AP.

‘What will defeat do to the Republicans?’
By Paul Krugman / November 3, 2008

Maybe the polls are wrong, and John McCain is about to pull off the biggest election upset in American history. But right now the Democrats seem poised both to win the White House and to greatly expand their majorities in both houses of Congress.

Most of the post-election discussion will presumably be about what the Democrats should and will do with their mandate. But let me ask a different question that will also be important for the nation’s future: What will defeat do to the Republicans?

You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

Why will the G.O.P. become more, not less, extreme? For one thing, projections suggest that this election will drive many of the remaining Republican moderates out of Congress, while leaving the hard right in place.

For example, Larry Sabato, the election forecaster, predicts that seven Senate seats currently held by Republicans will go Democratic on Tuesday. According to the liberal-conservative rankings of the political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, five of the soon-to-be-gone senators are more moderate than the median Republican senator — so the rump, the G.O.P. caucus that remains, will have shifted further to the right. The same thing seems set to happen in the House.

Also, the Republican base already seems to be gearing up to regard defeat not as a verdict on conservative policies, but as the result of an evil conspiracy. A recent Democracy Corps poll found that Republicans, by a margin of more than two to one, believe that Mr. McCain is losing “because the mainstream media is biased” rather than “because Americans are tired of George Bush.”

And Mr. McCain has laid the groundwork for feverish claims that the election was stolen, declaring that the community activist group Acorn — which, as Factcheck.org points out, has never “been found guilty of, or even charged with” causing fraudulent votes to be cast — “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” Needless to say, the potential voters Acorn tries to register are disproportionately “other folks,” as Mr. Chambliss might put it.

Anyway, the Republican base, egged on by the McCain-Palin campaign, thinks that elections should reflect the views of “real Americans” — and most of the people reading this column probably don’t qualify.

Thus, in the face of polls suggesting that Mr. Obama will win Virginia, a top McCain aide declared that the “real Virginia” — the southern part of the state, excluding the Washington, D.C., suburbs — favors Mr. McCain. A majority of Americans now live in big metropolitan areas, but while visiting a small town in North Carolina, Ms. Palin described it as “what I call the real America,” one of the “pro-America” parts of the nation. The real America, it seems, is small-town, mainly southern and, above all, white.

I’m not saying that the G.O.P. is about to become irrelevant. Republicans will still be in a position to block some Democratic initiatives, especially if the Democrats fail to achieve a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

And that blocking ability will ensure that the G.O.P. continues to receive plenty of corporate dollars: this year the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has poured money into the campaigns of Senate Republicans like Minnesota’s Norm Coleman, precisely in the hope of denying Democrats a majority large enough to pass pro-labor legislation.

But the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.

This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.

Source / The New York Times

Thanks to Ramsey Wiggins / The Rag Blog

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James Dobson’s Mass Mailing : ‘Focus on Stupidity’

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Apocalyptic fearmonger James Dobson.

‘Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,’: ‘Toxic Cornpone.’
by Robert Weitzel / November 3, 2008

You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what his ’pinions is.

Mark Twain

Mark Twain once said that “in matters concerning religion and politics a man’s reasoning powers are not above the monkey’s.” Now if the two are combined, as James Dobson’s right-wing Christian organization, Focus on the Family, did in their recent “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” the bar has been lowered to somewhere between the reasoning power of the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, the most poisonous biological substance known, and that of George W. Bush … the most toxic presidential substance yet known [19 percent approval rating].

Dobson’s letter from the “future” was emailed on October 22 to millions of his weekly TV and radio audience in the United States. His purpose was to scare the bejesus out of corn pone connoisseurs who devour the stuff faster than even Jesus can multiply it.

Keep in mind that the targeted readers’ “reasoning power” has already convinced them that they’re going to be Raptured—swooshed up bodily [naked as a third-rate centerfold] into heaven—moments after they initiate an apocalyptic nuclear conflagration in the Middle East, which they hope will eventually engulf the entire world. This is not a one-derivation-above-the-mean crowd, after all.

“To create man was a fine and original idea; but to add the sheep was a tautology.” Thank you, Mr. Twain.

According to the letter, a phantasmagoria of horror begins shortly after Obama takes office. Shedding his centrist campaigning skin, he is transmogrified into a far left-wing liberal antichrist. Outlandish? Keep reading.

In his first week in office Obama fires all 93 U.S. attorneys and replaces them with radical ACLU lawyers. Consequently, the Justice Department initiates criminal proceedings against nearly every member of the Bush administration.

Due to death or retirement, the Supreme Court is taken over by far left-wing radical judges (6-3 majority) who—you guessed it—begin legislating from the bench. The youthful appointees are expected to rule the country for the next 30-40 years.

Same-sex marriage becomes the law and compulsory training in gender identity in elementary school results in the firing of tens of thousands of Christian teachers accused of hate speech for refusing to speak positively about homosexuality.

The Boy Scouts choose to disband rather than obey a Supreme Court decision ordering them to hire homosexual scoutmasters to sleep with young boys in tents.

The Bible can no longer be read on radio or TV because doing so amounts to hate speech, and students cannot pray in school … not even silently while sitting outside the principal’s office.

All federal restrictions on abortion are removed and babies are killed only seconds before they can be delivered. Doctors and nurses who refuse to “murder” babies lose their licenses.

A new law mandating equal time for alternative views on public airwaves drives Rush Limbaugh types off the air, essentially shutting down conservative [hate] talk radio in America by 2010.

Commander in Chief Obama proves to be a total wimp, which emboldens Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists who eventually seize control of Iraq, imprisoning, torturing [imitation is the ultimate form of flattery] and putting to death millions of “American sympathizers” in that country.

Obama, it seems, is more interested in sending foreign aid to impoverished Third World countries in the form of food and medical aid, which does nothing but nourish and keep healthy the next generation of terrorists.

Dobson finally lets go of his tenuous grip on reality when he describes how Iran’s one nuclear missile destroys Tel Aviv and forces Israel to cede huge amounts of land to the Palestinians, leaving Israel defenseless. WHAT? Israel cede land? Israel defenseless?

“The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightening ain’t distributed right.” Thank you Mr. Twain.

Oh yeah, and gasoline costs $7 per gallon and only military personnel can own a gun.

Needless to say, the next four years are a living hell for the Dobson clan, much as the last eight years have been for anyone with reasoning power marginally superior to that of Twain’s pet monkey.

As a bona fide left-wing liberal atheist, who “wasted” a vote on Nader, I had mixed feelings reading Dobson’s half-baked corn pone. My initial reaction was something akin to enjoying a preposterously funny Twain satire. But then I began to get the creepy feeling I was reading an American fundamentalist version of the Nazis’1935 Nuremburg Laws, which disenfranchised German Jews and foreshadowed the murderous persecution of European Jewry.

It became clear that what I was actually reading was Focus on the Family’s back-handed glimpse of America under a ruler of their choice … say, for instance, Sarah Palin.

Win or lose this time around, Palin is the GOP’s rising star and James Dobson’s heartthrob. She’s the “real deal” of an End Times fundamentalist. Unlike President Bush—a suspected convert—she’s been stuffing her gob with apocalyptic corn pone her entire life. The only way for Palin to get to heaven with her admittedly appealing carcass intact is the Rapture route via an Armageddon avenue, which does not bode well for a survivable foreign policy.

It’s easy to poke fun at the corn pone Focus on the Family and like-mindless organizations dish out during an election. It stops being funny, however, when one realizes that for tens of millions of people this fare is their only sustenance, and this toxic repast, like the bacterium Clostridium botulinum, is the most poisonous of all substances to the body politic.

“If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times.” Thank you, Mr. Twain.

[Robert Weitzel is a contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI.]

Source / Dissident Voice

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TRUE Democracy and the Common Good Will Lead the American Left to Victory

Posted on November 3, 2008 by RagBlog

Expressing the Common Good through cooperative effort. Photo source.

The ‘Common Good’ is a Rose that Smells as Sweet
By Zwarich / The Rag Blog / November 3, 2008

In his recent piece entitled ‘Socialism, Capitalism: What’s in a Name?‘, David Hamilton has hit upon the crucial key to success for the American Left. In this excellent essay, he posits that we should examine the terminology that we use to advance our social ideals. I could not agree more, and would like to support his thesis, and hopefully direct more attention and discussion to this crucially important idea.

I heartily agree with Mr. Hamilton’s implied thesis that too many of us insist on using terminology that has been loaded with layer upon layer of cultural mythology. Many people use these terms, like ‘socialism’ and ‘capitalism’, without having any clear idea in mind what they mean. They only know that the cruelly unjust system under which we live now is referred to as ‘capitalism’, and they have come to believe in a false binary reality in which something called ‘socialism’ is the only alternative.

It is my own impression, derived from a lifetime as a leftist, that very few people who advocate for ‘socialism’ have ever read Marx or Engels at all, or have even a rudimentary understanding of the extended implications of the kind of highly centralized economy posited by these mid 19th century thinkers.

Our modern cultural mythology has been heavily influenced by the historical record of the abhorrent ‘on the ground’ experiences that have resulted from the practice of noble socialist theory, to the extent that ‘socialism’ has come to symbolize the horrors of totalitarianism, with which it has always been closely associated in the real, (as opposed to the theoretical), world.

When many people use this word ‘socialism’, it is my experiential impression that they are not intending to advocate for a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, or any other policies that History has shown to be abject failures. They are simply advocating for what Mr. Hamilton so aptly suggests here, (the commons), but does not call by its full proper name, the Common Good.

The culture of indulgence of individual Desire that has developed in America with the rise of mass media is a perversion of the culture of the Common Good that was once much more characteristic of the thinking, manner, and teaching of the common citizenry. Americans once believed, and taught our children to believe, that an individual has the social obligation to restrain her or his Desire within the bounds of the Common Good.

It is fine, and admirable, and to be encouraged, for ‘the individual’, (according to this culture of the Common Good), to strive to achieve her or his desires and dreams, but it is the obligation of each to restrain dreams that infringe on the dreams and desires of others. Each individual must fit her or his dreams and desires within the shared social concept of the Common Good.

It is instinctively abhorrent to human sensibility that some should be allowed to garner such a degree of wealth and privilege that others are deprived of the necessities of a dignified life. Beneath this modern culture of the celebration of selfishness and greed, we have an instinctive sense of the Common Good. No parent teaches their children that they are free to grab a portion that deprives their brothers and sisters of their fair share.

I have long tried to get leftists in America to quit using emotionally charged terminology that is poorly understood and weighted down with the baggage of an historical record of totalitarianism. We should use terminology that has universal human appeal, and rather than refer to ‘capitalism’ or ‘socialism’ as mega-systems, we should refer to specific policies that either serve, or damage, the Common Good.

Health care, for example, is a human right. Our basic need and desire to be healthy should not be allowed to be grossly exploited as a profit opportunity. Likewise other needs that are common to all of us, such as our basic utilities, such as water and energy, or our mass communications system, or our basic food production and distribution, should not be allowed to be held captive by private interests to be grossly exploited for their opulent profit. All such policies can have universal appeal, (and once did), because they conform to the instinctive human perception of the Common Good.

I have tried to get the American Left to look at the empirical evidence of the historical record, or else to conclude from the most basic logic that seems like it should be easily clear to all, that neither Socialism nor Capitalism, nor any other ‘ism’, are the major determinants of social justice. It is the degree of True Democracy in a society that determines whether or not the society’s economic system serves the Common Good, or private gain.

We need only look at the historical record to see that in countries where Marxist theory has been put into practice, Democracy has been an absurd pretense, with the inevitable result that the people have soon discovered that by ‘overthrowing capitalism’ they have only traded one set of oppressive masters for another.

Why advance a concept represented by a word, ‘socialism’, that is used as a epithet by so many people, when we could advance concepts, like Democracy, and the Common Good, that are so deeply and inherently ingrained in the psyche of American culture? True Democracy, by its very intrinsic nature, cannot serve any purpose other than to advance the Common Good. This social concept has been severely assaulted by the culture of selfishness and greed at the level of mass consciousness, but when most American mothers and fathers rear their children, they still teach them that they must ‘share their toys’, and ‘consider others as they would have others consider them’.

These basic concepts, Democracy, (TRUE Democracy, not the perversions that have been purveyed by socialists and capitalists alike), and the Common Good, are the concepts that will lead us to the victory that we, the American Left, are destined to achieve.

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Islamophobia in Texas : Fear-Mongering in Race for Education Board

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Republican Bradley: Opponent soft on Islam.
By Lisa Falkenberg

Watch out, parents. Democratic State Board of Education candidate Laura Ewing wants to convert your children to Islam.

At least, that’s the implication of a campaign ad from her opponent, Republican David Bradley of Beaumont.

“Do you know what the Democrat for State Board of Education supports?” reads the handout, which was disseminated at a recent gathering of the Golden Triangle Republican Women and trumpeted earlier this year at a Republican senatorial convention.

The handout features a 2004 newsletter article documenting the scandalous details: In 2003, Ewing was one of nearly 20 social studies educators who traveled to Africa and India to study (gasp!) Islamic history and culture, with plans to develop curriculum for Texas schoolchildren in sixth-grade world cultures classes and high school-level world geography and history.

Fair game for fear-mongers

Need more proof? Bradley’s ad features a photo of Ewing, former teacher, social studies curriculum specialist and Friendswood city councilwoman, caught red-handed, posing in front of the Taj Mahal!

Ewing admits her guilt: Yes, the educator dared to educate herself about Islamic culture, including everything from architecture to poetry.

Why did she do it? She claims it has nothing to do with converting Texas students to Islam, and everything to do with another radical philosophy: “We’ve got to understand other people because we’re a global economy,” she says. “We’ve got to prepare our students for the 21st century.”

Where does she get this stuff?

Apparently, ties to Islam — any ties at all — are fair game for fear-mongers this election season. No exception for this down-ballot, but pivotal race for the Southeast Texas seat on the 11-member state education board.

It’s easy to dismiss Bradley’s campaign handout as dirty campaigning with an unusually bigoted bent.

And his argument is further undercut by some inconvenient facts: It was Bradley’s fellow Republican, Gov. Rick Perry, who worked with the University of Texas and the Aga Khan Foundation, to help arrange the trip for the social studies educators. And, Bradley admits that he voted, in his first term on the state board, for the state curriculum standards that call for students to study other cultures and religions.

The ‘A’ word

But the campaign piece represents more than politics of fear. It’s a poignant example of the kind of logic, or illogic, that Bradley, the board’s vice chairman, applies to crucial decisions involving curriculum and textbook selection affecting every public schoolchild in this state.

This is the man who, in my column in April, called critical thinking “gobbledygook.” He’s one of the board members who scrapped recommendations from educators from 17 literacy organizations representing 13,000 teachers in favor of a new, back-to-basics — many would say backward — reading curriculum for the next decade that eliminates the teaching of comprehension in higher grades.

And, if re-elected, the social conservative who favors teaching the weaknesses of evolution theory will help decide science curriculum standards in Texas for the next decade.

Recently, he nominated a leading promoter of intelligent design as one of six “experts” to review proposed standards. (Two others are scientists with serious doubts about Darwin.)

The board under Bradley and Chairman Don McLeroy, a College Station Republican — neither of whom have a background in education — has veered so far out of control that lawmakers are contemplating the option of converting the elected board back to an appointed one.

“I’ve heard the rumblings,” House Public Education Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, told me recently. “I’ve heard the ‘A’ word.”

I asked Bradley what bothered him so much about Ewing’s trip.

“I think Islamic curriculum is about the furthest thing that we need to be introducing into Texas classrooms,” he said, adding a bit later, “I think people are real sensitive about Islamic studies, given recent events in the United States.”

Some, like Ewing, believe that sensitivity should be best addressed with more education, not more ignorance.

Back to basics

But Bradley’s view of what our schools should offer is limited.

“I think we need to spend a whole lot more of our time and energy on reading, writing and arithmetic,” he told me. “And, you know, if there’s time to spare, the students might be able to spend a little time on some electives. But we’re doing a very poor job on reading, writing and arithmetic to be spending time, money and effort on other curriculums.”

And there you have it.

In 2008, the vice president of the board that decides what our children learn and what textbooks will teach it to them believes that science and social studies are unnecessary.

And traveling outside the country to learn about another culture is fodder for a political attack ad.

Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Source / Houston Chronicle / Posted Oct. 27, 2008

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Expert: Nuclear Power Is Too Risky and Expensive

Posted on November 3, 2008 by RagBlog

A nuclear power plant on Lake Erie, in Michigan. © mandj98 (flickr)

Nukenomics no longer add up.
By Brittany Schell / October 31, 2008

WASHINGTON — Nuclear power is a risky source of energy that comes with many hidden costs, said an environmental analyst and long-time leader in the U.S. environmental movement Tuesday.

Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, said the “flawed economics” of nuclear power are placing unforeseen burdens on taxpayers: the costs related to the construction of nuclear plants, the disposal of nuclear waste, the decommissioning of old plants, and security in case of an accident all contribute to the price the world pays for nuclear power. Wind energy is a more economically sound option, said Brown.

The apparent cost of nuclear power is the cost of construction and fuel for nuclear plants, and this price is rising. The estimated construction cost of a nuclear reactor two years ago was between $2 and $4 billion. Now it is $7 billion, in part because of the rising cost of steel and cement, Brown said.

The price of fuel for nuclear power plants is also on the rise. Uranium now costs $60 per pound, compared to $10 at the beginning of the decade. This increase is due to the depletion of easily mined sites rich in ore, Brown said. Companies now have to dig deeper to find uranium, and the uranium content of the ore has dropped.

Brown said that when calculating the true cost of nuclear power, factors such as waste disposal, insurance in case of an accident, and decommissioning costs once a plant is worn out have to be included.

“A dollar invested in wind produces more energy, leads to a greater reduction in carbon emissions, and creates more jobs than one invested in nuclear power.” -Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute

Brown mentioned the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, where the United States plans to store the radioactive waste from its 104 nuclear reactors, as an example of unforeseen costs of nuclear power. Yucca Mountain is located 90 miles outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. The cost of this repository, estimated at $58 billion in 2001, has climbed to $96 billion.

“Not only is Yucca Mountain over budget, it is 19 years behind schedule,” said Brown. “It was originally supposed to be ready to accept waste in 1998 and it now is scheduled for 2017. It’s not even certain that it will ever be completed.”

The lack of a permanent waste storage facility is a security risk and security costs are usually not included in financial analyses either, said Brown. There are 121 temporary facilities in 39 states, and it is difficult to monitor and provide adequate security for all the sites. He cautioned that this distribution leaves the sites vulnerable to leakage, as well as possible terrorist attacks.

“There is a growing risk of radioactive material getting into the wrong hands,” Brown said. He said there were 250 incidents last year of nuclear material being lost or stolen, and a lot was never recovered.

Another risk of nuclear power, according to Brown, is the danger of another accident like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Sandia National Laboratory estimates that a worst-case scenario accident would cost $700 billion, “roughly the size of the fiscal bail out that congress passed a few weeks ago,” said Brown. The cap on liability for U.S. nuclear power plants was set at $10 billion by the government, so in the case of such an accident the excess cost would be born by tax payers.

The cost of decommissioning older nuclear reactors can tip the balance sheet too. Reactors have an average life expectancy of about 40 years. Since the first plant opened in 1954, over 100 reactors have been closed, but many have not completed the decommissioning process, said Brown. According to a 2004 International Atomic Energy Agency report, the decommissioning cost for each reactor will range from $250 to $500 million, not including the cost of removing and disposing of the waste.

A report by nuclear consultant Mycle Schneider said recently that about 90 nuclear reactors are set to close within the next seven years. With only 36 new nuclear reactors under construction worldwide, Brown notes that world nuclear power generation could drop by 10 percent by 2015. With this “aging of the nuclear fleet,” nuclear power generation could hit a sharp decline as more aging reactors close.

“What we’re looking at is a half century of growth being replaced by what could be decades of decline,” said Brown.

Wind power rising. © Auntie K (Flickr)

In light of this impending decline, Brown said the U.S. government should stop investing money in nuclear power — currently over $70 billion a year — and devote more money to the research and development of renewable energy sources, such as wind.

Comparing nuclear power with wind, Brown pointed out that nuclear power already costs twice as much as electricity produced from the wind, not including the additional costs he cited.

“If we look at the economics comparing nuclear with wind, a dollar invested in wind produces more energy, leads to a greater reduction in carbon emissions, and creates more jobs than one invested in nuclear power,” said Brown.

Environmental research and activist groups, including the Center for American Progress, Greenpeace, and the Worldwatch Institute, are pressing the next administration in Washington to support multibillion-dollar “green jobs” programs to spur the U.S. economy while slowing the onset of global climate change. Each group’s plan calls for a significant increase in government support for renewable energy.

The U.S. Department of Energy released the first national wind resource inventory in 1991, which highlighted the potential of three states — North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas — to satisfy the country’s electricity needs through wind energy. Brown said that since then, wind turbine technology has improved and he estimated that these three states now have enough potential wind energy to satisfy the country’s entire energy needs, not just electricity.

“Wind is the most mature of the renewable energy sources,” said Brown. “Emphasizing the creation of new jobs with investments in renewables and efficiency is the way we want to go.”

Source / OneWorld.net

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Protesting Oil Sands Development in Alberta

Posted on November 3, 2008 by RagBlog

Participants from the Council of Canadians annual general meeting on Saturday march from Veteran’s Park at 102nd Street and MacDonald Drive to the legislature to demand a freeze on new approvals of oilsands expansion. The banner’s reference to Olympic activity on native land refers to land-claim conflicts on the West Coast. Photo: Greg Southam, The Journal

Ft. Chip residents, activists protest oilsands intrusion
By Clara Ho / November 2, 2008

Mike Mercredi is ready to fight what he calls the “slow industrial genocide” that oil companies are waging on the people in his hometown of Fort Chipewyan.

Last year there were over 20 deaths in the community of 1,200 people. Many were cancer-related deaths, which Mercredi said are linked to the oilsands activities in nearby Fort McMurray.

“Let’s put a lid on it and slow things down,” he said. “The graveyard is getting full.”

Mercredi was among the group of 200 activists who marched through downtown to the legislature grounds Saturday afternoon demanding a halt to new approvals for oilsands projects.

As they walked down Jasper Avenue from the Crowne Plaza Hotel, they waved signs and large banners with messages such as “Oil boom, planet doom” and “Crude is rude” while cars drove by and honked in support.

The march was organized by the Council of Canadians who were in Edmonton hosting their annual general meeting.

Supporting the aboriginal residents of Fort Chipewyan who have been impacted by oilsands development were Edmonton-Strathcona MP Linda Duncan, Friends of Medicare executive director David Eggen and members of the local Raging Grannies activist group.

Duncan said the economic downturn provides an opportunity for the federal and provincial governments “to bring people together, figure out a strategy, and figure out how we’re going to consider environment and human health.”

Assembling on the steps of the legislature building, Maude Barlow, the United Nations’ newly appointed water adviser, said oilsands activities need to be slowed down for the sake of future generations.

“This is not a sustainable future, this is a death future. This is a future that rapes from the planet so that we can continue to live a certain lifestyle for a few more years and leave our children with the legacy of a dying planet,” she said.

Barlow clarified that she’s not calling for to end all oilsands activity. Rather, she is rejecting the approval of new projects while recommending a full, environmental assessment to find safer, more sustainable ways of mining energy.

Barlow’s message was the focus of this year’s annual general meeting, which started Friday and ends today.

One of Saturday’s workshops, led by Council of Canadians energy campaigner Andrea Harden-Donahue, Greenpeace oilsands campaigner Mike Hudema and Parkland Institute director Gordon Laxer, examined the need for a Canadian energy strategy in the wake of peak oil and climate change.

Laxer said he is advocating for a strategy that would supply Canadians first to develop a strong environmental policy as well as “ensure that Canadians don’t freeze in the dark in an international supply crisis.”

Harden-Donahue argued there would not be jobs lost in the slowing of oilsands activities, but more green jobs available in the renewable resources industry. And Hudema urged workshop attendees to consider the human impact of the oilsands on northern communities such as Fort Chipewyan.

As for Mercredi, he said he would keep fighting to spread the message to slow oilsands development. “When faced with death, you do whatever you can to survive. So I’m going to fight to the end.”

© The Edmonton Journal 2008

Source / Edmonton Journal

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POETRY / Mariann Wizard : Bad Obama

Posted on November 3, 2008 by RagBlog

Photo: Dina Rudick/Boston Globe.

Bad Obama

“In April, the Los Angeles Times published an article about a going-away dinner for [Rashid] Khalidi that [Presidential candidate Barack] Obama attended in Chicago, Illinois, in 2003. Khalidi was leaving to become a professor at Columbia.

“The paper reported that a young Palestinian-American woman recited a poem at the… party that accused the Israeli government of terrorism for its treatment of Palestinians and was highly critical of U.S. support of Israel.”

— CNN.com, “Palin accuses Obama of ties to second ‘radical professor’“, 10/29/2008

Oh bad Obama!
How could you hear that woman and not run from the room?
How could you not stop your ears to her rhymed insinuations of injustice?
Were you too damned well-bred to object?

Oh bad Obama!
Real-Americans don’t tolerate criticisms of the U! S! A! from young Palestinian-American women!
Real-Americans don’t have college professor friends with funny-sounding names!
Real-Americans — let’s face it: don’t listen to pansy, egg-head, subversive poetry!

Oh bad, bad Obama!
You want to sit down with America’s enemies and talk?
Tell us instead who we’ll bomb and destroy!
Tell us who’s to blame for all our problems;
let’s find the dirty rats and waste ’em!
Show us your inner Tyrannosaurus rex, not your inner Barney!
We’re not a very civilized people,
here in Real-Amerika;
we want you to kill a deer,
or some kind of bird
(don’t pardon that White House turkey) –
then we’ll know you’re strong enough
to guard us from creeping nightmares!

II

Bad, bad, bad Obama —
O manchild at the gates of the Promised Land —
Right now I wish you would spit some shit
for the peeps in the street,
who are all down, Bro,
with that ‘change’ thing;
tell the Moose Lady that poetry
is a secret window to the soul;
a code spoken by radicals only;
something beyond her reality show range!
Let us hear you do the ‘dozens’!
Let us all hear some dangerous poetry!
Oh bad Obama — let yo’ Bad Self out!

III

Oh, my bad, Obama…
I know you’ve gotta break the frame,
not get caught in the game,
but the Real-You doesn’t matter
if they can’t get over your name!
It’s Zombie Time, and in Congo Square,
all the hungry zombies are voting there,
defying those real folks, always gettin’ fatter,
while zombie have nothing; do the real folks care?
All the ancient, storied haints are out tonight,
titillating themselves with fright,
hopes and horrors both in threadbare tatters,
scuttle the streets, keep away from the light.

For real, Obama:
now is the time to keep wits and witnesses around you!
The old America stinks of deadly contradiction; survivors are stunned;
your civilized veneer taunts those who find their views now shunned.

So be good, Obama!
There will be time for poetry in the morning;
time for that Voodoo, that you do, so well;
time for chicken blood and chocolates on the altar of Change-o.

— Mariann G. Wizard
© Dia de los Muertos, 2 nov 2008

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We Want Joe Bageant, Not ‘Joe, the Plumber’

Posted on November 2, 2008 by RagBlog

See video below.

Joe Bageant Knows Something About White Working-Class Voters — He Is One
By Nick Penniman / November 1, 2008.

The author of Deer Hunting with Jesus gives a very different account than the pollsters and political operatives on rural white voters.

Much has been said about white working-class voters. But those who’ve been doing all the talking are pollsters and political operatives. As part of its Long View series, ANP traveled to rural Virginia to talk to someone who’s lived the life and knows from personal experience what those voters are thinking — author Joe Bageant. His highly-acclaimed recent book, Deer Hunting With Jesus, was lauded by one reviewer as a “raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck.” In addition to being that, it’s also one of the most prescient pieces of analysis about American politics and culture in this election year.

Source / Alternet

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Coal: Not Quite As Dirty Once You Burn It

Posted on November 2, 2008 by RagBlog


What Is this “Clean Coal” Obama and McCain Support?
By Tara DePorte / October 31, 2008.

A look at whether “clean coal” is actually clean, how the technology works, and whether it is a climate crisis cure.

Both Presidential Candidates Obama and McCain have emphasized the need for Energy Reform as we face climate change, a sinking economy, and rising fuel costs. In a country where 85% of energy demands are from fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas), coal and “clean coal” are making a rhetoric comeback this election. However, the burning of coal has proven one of the leading human-based causes of global climate change due to resulting carbon dioxide emissions, let alone a diversity of air pollutants.

The Obama Energy Plan proposes to “develop and deploy clean coal technology.” McCain’s energy plan, “The Lexington Project,” commits to “$2 billion annually to advancing clean coal technologies.” As the candidates talk about “clean coal,” alternative energy, and energy independence, what’s the science behind the plans? In this article we’ll look into one of the more environmentally controversial options that has been put forth by the two candidates and try to help you decide how much of our nation’s energy plan we wanted devoted to “clean coal”.

Coal and its byproducts are everywhere — in plastics, tar, fertilizer, steel and as the energy source for major industries such as paper and cement. In the U.S., however, over 90% of coal is used for electricity generation, resulting in 83% of carbon dioxide emission from the power sector. Coal is burned in power plants to create steam, thereby powering turbines and generating both electricity and a diversity of harmful air pollutants. No matter how you look at it, there isn’t much clean about coal. The extraction and burning of coal is considered the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, including oil and gas. So, what is this new, innovative and so-called “clean coal”?

Unfortunately, no one has discovered a new form of coal — the black rock composed of carbon or hydrocarbons that is intensively mined throughout the world. The dangerous misnomers “clean coal” or “clean coal technology” are not about finding a cleaner form of fuel, instead they describe the reduction of air pollution from coal-burning power plants. For instance, some “clean coal technology” works to boost power plant efficiency in converting coal to energy, others physically filter emissions before release, and others are being developed to capture emissions upon release from the plants.

With each of these much less-than-perfect technologies, there’s a diversity of research and development, money and time, and effectiveness in curbing coal’s environmental and health impacts. Below you will find a sampling of “clean coal technologies” and some insights into their pros and cons:

Cleaning up the power plants: Scrubber and Increased Efficiency: Since the 80’s, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has been working to decrease particulate emissions, mercury, sulfur and nitrogen from coal-burning plants — all materials that contribute greatly to air and water pollution. “Scrubbers” are brushes and filters that are installed in smoke flues of coal-burning facilities, which physically remove some emissions’ components. The reduction of these emissions has shown some success due to increased scrubber technology, where smoke stacks have increased cleaning or screening mechanisms on them, and some other “clean coal technology” methods. Unfortunately, greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide have proven to be more difficult, energy and cost intensive to reduce at the source.

Gasification: Integrated gasification combined cycle or IGCC gets to the coal before it’s burned. According to the DOE, the process uses steam and hot pressurized air or oxygen to force coal particles apart, thereby resulting in carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This mix is cleaned and burned to make electricity with subsequent heat being used for powering steam turbines. Some good things about IGCC are that there is a biproduct of hydrogen that can be used in developing hydrogen fuel cells. Additionally, the process of gasification can also be used for biomass and other “renewables” technology. Alternatively, gasification technology is still quite expensive and not considered economically viable on mass scales.

Carbon sequestration or Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS): The basics of CCS are to capture carbon out of the air and to put it somewhere else. The methodology behind, and storage sites, vary and include underground storage, ocean storage, creating carbonate rock out of the carbon dioxide and others.

In a 2008 interview with Klaus Lackner, Columbia University Ewing-Worzel Professor of Geophysics and one of the foremost CCS scientists remarked, “The challenge is capture, not storage.” He continued, “Our goal is to take a process that takes 100,000 years and compress it into 30 minutes.” One of the good things about CCS is that it can help clean up the mess that we’ve gotten ourselves into in terms of carbon emissions already in the air. Many do question the long-term effectiveness and safety of storing this carbon in systems that aren’t used to having it there. Furthermore, although leaps and bounds have been made in past years in capturing CO2 from the air, the process is still costly and many estimate that the technology will not be ready for large-scale capture for many years to come.

With goals of zero-emissions coal power plants, the U.S. has spent over $2.5 billion since 2001 in research and development for “clean coal technology.” Unfortunately, none of the options on the table actually help coal–as a whole–become any cleaner. A misnomer at best, “clean coal technology” is key to the cleanup of existing coal-powered facilities, but it’s a long shot from the clean energy bill of health. There are some promising technologies being tested and applied within the “clean coal technology” umbrella, such as those addressing “end of the pipe” issues with the burning of the most abundant of fossil fuels.

However, few address the issues of coal extraction and its’ environmental and health impacts and none are currently viable at a mass scale. Perhaps if the Presidential Candidates start referring to it as “not quite as dirty once you burn it coal technology,” voters would have a better idea of what to expect in the upcoming new energy plans.

Source / Alternet

Thanks to Diane Stirling-Stevens / The Rag Blog

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The John McCain Mysteries : POW Questions and the Forrestal Affair

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Sen. John McCain warmly greeted Vietnam Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet during a 1992 visit to Hanoi.

Flyboy McCain: Unanswered Questions
By Sherman De Brosse / The Rag Blog / November 2, 2008

This is the sixth and final installment in a series by Rag Blog contributor Sherman De Brosse, a retired history professor, on John McCain, his shady involvements, past and present, and his wrong-headed and ill-informed political positions.

John McCain has repeatedly said that his life is an open book, but a close examination reveals that this is not the case. One of the most puzzling aspects of his long career is that he has repeatedly been the point man in an effort to prevent the friends and families of Vietnam War MIAs from learning what happened to their loved ones. It makes no sense as McCain is the most famous of the Vietnam War POWs.

When the French were forced out of Indochina, the Communist Vietnamese required that they pay for the return of their prisoners. The North Vietnamese planned to do the same with the United States. They released John McCain and 590 others in January, 1973, and told the United States it would have to pay for the rest. General Tran Van Quang placed the number of the remaining prisoners at 1,205. On February 1, 1973, President Richard Nixon wrote to the North Vietnamese premier, promising $3.25 billion for “postwar reconstruction.” The United States never paid the ransom. Later, in 1981, the North Vietnamese, through a third party, offered to return our personnel — now MIAs — for $4 billion. Richard Allen, Reagan’s national security advisor, told Congress about the offer. Treasury agent John Syphrit said he was present when the offer was discussed.

Two Secretaries of Defense, Mel Laird and Richard Schlesinger, have told Congress that American personnel are still in Vietnam. The evidence of this is based upon eyewitness sightings, radio messages, and the prisoners triggering motion sensors in a manner they had been taught to indicate their presence. The servicemen had been taught to enter into the sensors twenty different authentication numbers.

In 1992, Dolores Alford, sister of a missing airman, appeared before the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. She raised questions about her brother and the others and asked about the sensor evidence. The committee was chaired by Senator John Kerry, but John McCain was its dominant force due to his celebrity and background as a POW. With his face turned pink in rage, McCain took some time yelling and berating the woman and ranting about Ms. Alford “denigrating” his “patriotism.” He shouted and shook his fist at witnesses, reducing one to tears. The Committee put out a report that essentially covered up what was going on, but buried deep in it the staff wrote that the people who analyze satellite and low altitude photographs had never been told about the various distress signals that had been received. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney H. Schanberg thinks that most of the prisoners have died or have been executed but he believes that some remain in Vietnam.

McCain was also busy sabotaging legislation that would help people learn what had happened to their loved ones. In 1990 and 1991, he handicapped the Truth bill. Then he passed his own version that had all sorts of Catch 22 mechanisms to get in the way of researchers. In 1995 and 1996 he attached crippling amendments to the Missing Service Personnel Act.

John McCain has constantly ridiculed the POW activists, referring to the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists,” and calling them “hoaxers” and “charlatans.” Then he demanded that the Justice Department investigate some of the people who opposed him on this issue. St. John Mc Cain told reporters:

The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam.

The Justice Department did his bidding and probed two organizations, but did not find evidence of a scam. McCain heaped scorn on H. Ross Perot, whose concern about the POW/MIAs was certainly sincere and well-informed. Navy Captain and fellow POW Eugene “Red” McDaniel was also attacked by the Arizonan as a fraud.

In 1996, a group of MIA advocates asked to speak with him outside a committee hearing room. He erupted in anger and shoved them aside. They included Jane Duke Gaylor, a woman in a wheelchair who was the mother of a missing POW.

His conduct in respect to POW issues simply defies reason, and his angry outbursts suggest he lacks the temperament to be Commander in Chief.

His strange and irrational conduct in respect to the POW issue needs to be explained. Some of the former Swift Boaters are now actively involved in Vietnam Veterans against John McCain. They have leveled all sorts of charges against the man, but the mainstream media refuses to acknowledge their presence or even look into what they have to say.

They are clearly correct on the POW/MIA issue. They claim that McCain cooperated with the enemy too much while a prisoner of war. It is suggested that his conduct in Hanoi is being held over his head to induce him to frustrate the POW/MIA advocates. No one has ever seen a nonredacted copy of McCain’s post-Hanoi debriefing and the Pentagon refuses to release copies of his confessions. It is an unpleasant subject amd anyone would be disinclined to blame him for almost anything he said under torturous conditions.

A few of the things he has said about his captivity do not add up. John LeBoutillier is on solid ground when he notes that McCain’s story about the guard making the sign of the cross in the dirt was probably borrowed from Admiral Jeremiah Denton, another POW/Senator.

There is ample evidence that Soviet (KGB &GRU) and Cuban psychiatrists interrogated POWs in Hanoi, yet McCain insists that it never happened. Some former prisoners spoke about interrogators from North Korea, whose programs for turning prisoners were very successful. It is documented that McCain was interviewed by Spanish psychiatrist Fernando Barral in 1970. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin told a Senate committee in 1992 that Soviet officers interrogated prisoners on a daily basis. Why would McCain deny the presence of non-Vietnamese interrogators and also hug the Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin as though he were a long lost brother. Bui Tin, who had been a North Vietnamese interrogator. One cannot help wondering about the Stockholm Syndrome.

By his own 1973 US News and World Report account, he thought many of the prisoners had been drugged. Of course, the North Vietnamese could have done this, as drugging and interrogations have long gone hand and hand. McCain’s account includes the claim of being tortured daily, but his two senior officers have said they do not believe he was tortured. Some, including fellow prisoners, say his injuries were the result of the plane crash.

Oddly, he embraced the Vietnamese , Mai Van On, in 1997, who pulled him out of his plane and assisted him, but refused further contact after that meeting in Vietnam. By most accounts, he has become Vietnam’s best friend in the US Senate.

Some suggest that McCain could be blackmailed with information substantiating charges that he was responsible for the terrible accident on the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, 1967, when 132 lives were lost. The incident is called the “Forrestfire.” Forrestal survivors angrily confronted him in South Carolina in 2000. It is said that Lt. Commander John McCain “wet started” his A-4E, which set off a chain reaction. Wet-starting was forbidden but considered sort of a joke prank among some pilots. It involved feeding fuel before starting the plane, resulting in more than 12 feet of flames coming out of his plane’s tail that day.

The object was to alarm the pilot in the plane behind you. It is claimed that the flame triggered a 6 foot Zuni rocket from an F-4 ahead of Mc Cain to crash into the plane next to Mc Cain’s A-4 fuel tank. Fortunately, he had much practice getting out of planes in a hurry. Then one of his bombs “booked off” and blew a hole in the deck. This is the version of his critics, and many on the Forrestal believed it. That is why McCain was evacuated with the badly wounded.

Some flyers showed great valor and lost their lives fighting the fire. McCain went below but briefly helped sailors off load some bombs from an elevator. He went to the ready room to watch others fight the fire via closed-circuit TV. In his memoirs, he said he was down there worrying about his flying career. The next morning, McCain was evacuated along with the reporter who came aboard to report on the fire. He was the only uninjured Naval person to be evacuated. As his shipmates mourned the lost, he went off to Saigon for R&R.

The official story simply does not mention McCain or his plane, number 416. This author has studied the tapes repeatedly and thinks that the critics are probably dealing the senator a bad rap. The trouble is that the official film footage was not focused on McCain’s plane when the accident began to happen.

It is puzzling why his shipmates disliked him so and blamed him. Some point out that few Naval aviators from his time have endorsed McCain’s quest for the presidency. That might be because he was more serious about partying than being a pilot and because command influence was used in his favor so often. He had been passed over for promotion twice before this incident. The main reason for withholding promotions is belief that the candidate lacks maturity. Of course, he was promoted as a matter of policy after he became a POW.

There are other aspects of McCain’s life that leave up partly in the dark. We know precious little about his mob ties — just enough to worry. The press dropped the Paxon Communications story like a hot potato, and it looks like all his ties with cable and communications people need examination. Much more needs to be known about his gambling habits because this reflects judgment, and his personal ties to people in the gambling industry are important because they could bear on ethics. Even his health status is shrouded as only select reporters were permitted to peruse, and take no notes, on select records for a limited period of time.

With all these questions in mind, all we really have is the image he has carefully constructed and the obvious fact that he seems given to rash decisions and frightening outburst of anger. Just the kind of person we need in the presidency!

Also see the following opinion piece on the Forrestal incident: Flyboy McCain : Hero or Fraud? by Thomas Cleaver / The Rag Blog / Reposted with extensive discussion on Sept. 5, 2008.

And see other Rag Blog articles by Sherman DeBrosse on John McCain and Sarah Palin.

The Rag Blog

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FOX and MSNBC : Waging Ideological Warfare on the Boob Toob

Posted on November 2, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Class struggle lives on cable TV
By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / October 2, 2008

See ‘A Surge on One Channel, a Tight Race on Another,’ by Jim Rutenberg; and a comment by The Rag Blog’s Thorne Dreyer, Below.

Remember the first few years after nine eleven until we invaded Iraq? The US network TV media was loyal Republican back then. But now we have Olbermann and Hannity duking it out for ratings with partisan politicians, with progressive Olbermann winning.

Its exactly what you would expect where there is relative freedom of the press combined with hard times. The public is dimly aware of Roosevelt and how a presidential swing to the left seemed to help deal with the great depression, which elected FDR the same as this one will elect Obama.

The TV advertising pie is shrinking, partly due to the internet. The internet increasingly sets the standard for media freedom, making it safer for other media to permit free expression.

Taking partisan positions that reflect shifting opinion toward a big need for basic governmental reforms can get a network more viewers as public opinion shifts. Be glad that some strong elements of democracy survived the Bush era. And be prepared to defend them from corporate counterattack as polarization of the media increases.

A Surge on One Channel, a Tight Race on Another
By Jim Rutenberg / November 2, 2008

WASHINGTON — It was a lousy day to be Senator John McCain, Keith Olbermann informed his viewers on MSNBC on Thursday.

Senator Barack Obama’s surge in the polls was so strong he was competitive in Mr. McCain’s home state, Arizona. The everyman hero of Mr. McCain’s campaign, “Joe the Plumber,” failed to make an expected appearance at a morning rally in Defiance, Ohio, and the senator’s efforts to highlight Mr. Obama’s association with a professor tied to the P.L.O. were amounting to nothing.

Wait a minute … not so fast. Click

Things were looking up for Mr. McCain, Sean Hannity and Greta Van Susteren told their viewers on Fox News Channel on Thursday. He got a boost at an afternoon rally in Sandusky, Ohio, from none other than Joe the Plumber, who announced his intention to vote for “a real American, John McCain”; he was gaining new ground in ever-tightening polls, despite the overwhelming bias against him in the mainstream news media; and Mr. Obama’s association with a professor sympathetic to the P.L.O. was now at “the center of the election.”

On any given night, there are two distinctly, even extremely, different views of the presidential campaign offered on two of the three big cable news networks, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, a dual reality that is reflected on the Internet as well.

On one, polls that are “tightening” are emphasized over those that are not, and the rest of the news media is portrayed as papering over questions about Mr. Obama’s past associations with people who have purportedly anti-American tendencies that he has not answered. (“I feel like we are talking to the Germans after Hitler comes to power, saying, ‘Oh, well, I didn’t know,’ ” Ann Coulter, the conservative commentator, told Mr. Hannity on Thursday.)

On the other, polls that show tightening are largely ignored, and the race is cast as one between an angry and erratic Mr. McCain, whose desperate, misleading campaign has as low as a 4 percent chance of beating a cool, confident and deserving Democratic nominee in Mr. Obama. (“He’s been a good father, a good citizen, he’s paid attention to his country,” Chris Matthews, the MSNBC host, said Wednesday night in addressing those who might be leaning against Mr. Obama based on race. “Give the guy a break and think about voting for him.”)

And, perhaps unsurprisingly, each campaign is often at war against its television antagonist, just as the networks are at war with each other.

It is a political division of news that harks back to the way American journalism was through the first half of the 20th century, when newspapers had more open political affiliations. But it has never been so apparent in such a clear-cut way on television, a result of market forces and partisan sensibilities that are further chipping away at the post-Watergate pre-eminence of a more dispassionate approach.

The more objective approach came as the corporate owners of the networks pushed for higher profits and the newspaper industry consolidated and sought broader audiences. “To sell as many copies as you could to as many people as you could, you became what we considered objective,” said Richard Wald, a professor of media and society at Columbia University School of Journalism and a former senior vice president at ABC News.

Fox News Channel was founded 12 years ago with an argument that the mainstream news media were biased toward liberals and that nonliberals were starved for a “Fair and Balanced” television antidote by day and openly conservative-leaning opinion by night. But it was only in the last couple of years that MSNBC, long struggling for an identity and lagging, established itself as a liberal alternative to Fox News Channel in prime time, finding improved ratings in the mistrust of the mainstream media that had grown among on the left during the Bush years and the Iraq war.

The presidential campaign, and the partisan and ideological intensity surrounding it, has been the perfect subject for both sides, providing endless fodder to play to the persuasions of their audience and mock the views expressed on the rival network.

The result is a return to a “great tradition of American journalism,” Mr. Wald said. “Basically you chose your news outlet if it made you happy, if it reinforced all your views.”

Indeed, voters who primarily get their news from Web sites like The Huffington Post by day and MSNBC by night, and those who primarily get theirs from The Drudge Report by day and Fox News Channel by night would have entirely different views of the candidates and the news driving the campaign year. (At second place in the ratings, behind Fox News Channel, CNN is maintaining a far more traditional approach to news this year.)

When Politico.com reported on Oct. 21 that the Republican National Committee had spent $150,000 on clothing for Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, Mr. Olbermann interrupted his 8 p.m. program on MSNBC to promote the story and discuss it, as did Rachel Maddow, whose program follows.

Fox News Channel reported it first the next morning, on “Fox & Friends,” in a segment in which the report was described as sexist and unfair, and Bill O’Reilly and Ms. Van Susteren later criticized the news media on their programs for giving it as much attention as they had.

“It was ridiculous,” said Mr. O’Reilly, singling out The New York Times in particular for covering the purchase.

That was a role reversal from spring 2007, when news broke that former Senator John Edwards had paid $400 for a haircut out of his Democratic presidential campaign account.

Mr. Olbermann named Mr. Hannity the “Worst Person in the World,” a running feature on his program, for making fun of Mr. Edwards’s haircut and showing video of him styling his hair before an interview.

Mr. O’Reilly had said of Mr. Edwards at the time: “He runs around telling Americans the system is rigged, while paying $400 for a haircut. This guy is a one-man sitcom.”

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism at the Pew Research Center, said, “To some extent, they are reverse images of each other.”

The group has studied the tone and content of the election-year coverage and found that Mr. McCain has been the subject of more negative reports in general than has Mr. Obama on issues that include assessments of their performances in polls, the debates and running their campaigns.

But within that universe, the study found, the share of positive reports on Mr. McCain at Fox News was above the average of the news media at large, and the share of negative reports about Mr. Obama was higher, too. (The study found that the mix of positive and negative was roughly equal for them on Fox.)

And the study found that MSNBC featured a higher percentage of negative reports about Mr. McCain than the rest of the news media and a higher share of positive reports about Mr. Obama. CNN was more generally in line with the average.

Mr. Rosenstiel said Fox News Channel and MSNBC showed ideological differences, “obviously more so at night.” And executives at those networks said that opinion was kept to their prime-time lineups and away from their news reporting.

Officials at the Obama and McCain campaigns said in interviews last week that they believed they were treated fairly by the reporters assigned to them at the two networks, including Major Garrett and Carl Cameron at Fox News Channel and Kelly O’Donnell and Lee Cowan at NBC News. (NBC pools some political newsgathering efforts with The New York Times.) And advisers to both campaigns show up for interviews on both networks.

Mr. Obama’s campaign aides said they were pleased when Shepard Smith, the Fox News Channel anchor, this week dressed down Joe the Plumber, a k a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, for agreeing with a voter who called a vote for Mr. Obama “a vote for the death of Israel.”

Reporting that Mr. Obama supported Israel, Mr. Smith added with exasperation, “It just gets frightening sometimes.”

And Ms. Maddow has expressed skepticism about Mr. Obama’s call for more troops in Afghanistan.

But officials at both campaigns also said there had been plenty of instances when they have perceived bias in regular news coverage. On Fox News Channel, for instance, Gregg Jarrett, referring to Mr. Obama, asked a guest, “Do economists say that in fact his policies could drive a recession into a depression?” (The guest, Donald Lambro of The Washington Times, responded, “Well, I haven’t read that, no.”)

Raising a report about Obama campaign suspicions that Mr. McCain got an unfair peek at questions to be asked of him at a joint forum at the Saddleback Church, Mr. McCain’s campaign wrote to NBC News in August, “We are concerned that your news division is following MSNBC’s lead in abandoning nonpartisan coverage of the presidential race.”

And sometimes the approaches have been noticeable simply through what the networks cover. After NPR reported late last week that a McCain supporter, former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, questioned whether Ms. Palin was “prepared to take the reins of the presidency,” MSNBC repeated it roughly 20 times over the course of the day, CNN mentioned it four times, a review of programming on the monitoring service ShadowTV found. And Fox News Channel did one segment, in which it interviewed Mr. Eagleburger, who apologized and said Ms. Palin was “a quick study.”

Fox News Channel executives would not comment for this article. Phil Griffin, president of MSNBC, agreed that at night his network gave a decidedly opinionated viewpoint.

“All of our material is based on fact — our guys work really hard on it, and the point-of-view shows make their conclusions,” Mr. Griffin said. “In this modern era, you’ve got a variety of places that look at the day’s events. Some you respect more than others, others you recognize as having a point of view, some you see as factual in a different way, and it all blends together into how you make your decision for what’s going on.

“The burden is a little more on the individual.”

Source / New York Times

This Times article is useful and interesting. However, it indulges in the traditional “He says,” “He says,” technique of “balanced” reporting.

Though there is no argument that both Fox and MSNBC are seriously opinionated in their reporting and commentary, there is a vast gap between the two when it comes to accuracy and credibility. Misinformation on Fox is frequent and well-documented. They have displayed photo-shopped images of New York Times reporters to make them appear sleazy, have run with highly controversial attack stories long before any substantial documentation has existed, have uttered on-air racial slurs with minimal apology and have given voice to sources with extreme right wing and anti-semitic backgrounds.

Keith Olbermann may be bombastic and at times over-the-top but he is extremely smart and his facts virtually always stand up. Bill O’Reilly, on the other hand, though a delightful blowhard (if you like that sort of thing) is legendary for his distortions and hate spiels.

Both networks are biased in their story choices and approaches. MSNBC, though often strident, retains independence and speaks more from philosophy than partisanship. Fox News is frequently little more than a spin machine for neo-con orthodoxy.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog

Lets Let FOX and MSNBC Be Partisan

Let’s be clear. There is nothing wrong with having a liberal or conservative leaning news station. The problem is when popular stations (FOX receives way more viewers than MSNBC) pretend to be fair and balanced. One of FOX News’ mottos is actually “fair and balanced.” At this point, it seems like FOX is barely trying to hide the fact that it is part of a vast propaganda machine for the Republican party. Dems have blogs, the GOP has tv and think tanks.

This is what led liberal blogs like Daily Kos, MYDD and TPM to staunchly oppose the Democratic Primary Debate on FOX news last fall. Allowing this debate to take place would have amounted to the Democratic Party’s tacit approval of the conservative station which masquerades as an exercise in journalistic ethics.

Ben Buchwalter / Talking Points Memo / Oct. 17, 2008

Also see When Fox News Is the Story / By David Carr / New York Times / July 7, 2008

And Fox News / SourceWatch

The Rag Blog

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