From The Producers Of Katrina…

Ken AshfordDisastersLeave a Comment

Enjoy the 2005 hurricane season?

That could be peanuts compared to what the 2006 season has in store, including, dire predictions about major devestation to Northeast cities.

"There are now indications that the Northeast will experience a hurricane larger and more powerful than anything that region has seen in a long time," said Ken Reeves, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather.com.

"The Northeast is staring down the barrel of a gun," said Joe Bastardi, AccuWeather.com’s chief hurricane forecaster.

Our Pro-Cancer President

Ken AshfordBush & Co., Health Care, Women's IssuesLeave a Comment

Last week, the he U.S. Congress approved a $781 billion increase in the legal borrowing limit for the federal government, raising the debt ceiling to nine trillion dollars (that’s 30,000 for every man, woman, and child in America).  All this to accomodate Bush’s psychotic spending, coupled with tax cuts for the wealthy.

So where, if anywhere, is the Bush Administration tightening its belt?

Ah, here’s a smart budget cut reflecting the "compassionate conservatism" we all know and love: (subscription required):

The federal government has a national breast and cervical cancer early detection program, run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It provides screening and other important services to low-income women who do not have health insurance, or are underinsured.

There is agreement across the board that the program is a success. It saves lives and it saves money. Its biggest problem is that it doesn’t reach enough women. At the moment there is only enough funding to screen one in five eligible women.

A sensible policy position for the Bush administration would be to expand funding for the program so that it reached everyone who was eligible. It terms of overall federal spending, the result would be a net decrease. Preventing cancer, or treating it early, is a lot less expensive than treating advanced cancer.

So what did this president do? He proposed a cut in the program of $1.4 million (a minuscule amount when you’re talking about the national budget), which would mean that 4,000 fewer women would have access to early detection.

This makes no sense. In human terms, it is cruel. From a budget standpoint, it’s self-defeating.

So, a successful and modest program that saves lives and money gets cut.

But fear not, women.  You can sleep at night knowing that the money is being put to good use.  Like painting kindergarten schools in Baghdad.

Dubai Debacle II

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Seeing as how the ports deal was such a hit, it looks like we’re in for a sequel.

A Dubai company is now seeking to buy American arms manufacturers.

Dubai, which agreed this month to sell its interest in U.S. ports, said its $1.2 billion takeover of a U.K. company with U.S. plants that make military equipment is delayed while the authorities investigate security concerns.

Dubai International Capital LLC, which is owned by the government of the Persian Gulf emirate, and Doncasters Group Ltd. agreed to delay the transaction by as many as two months from March 31 while government agencies review the purchase, Sameer Al Ansari, Dubai International’s chief executive, said in an interview today.

“After what happened with Dubai Ports, the government is looking at this deal more closely,” Al Ansari said after a press conference in Dubai announcing an agreement with HSBC Holdings Plc.

Dubai’s bid may ignite a similar political furor in the U.S. to that the emirate’s purchase of London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. caused last month when DP World had to agree to sell interests in six U.S. terminals. Revenue from Doncasters’ nine U.S. plants, which make parts for tanks and military aircraft, account for about 40 percent of total sales.

The derailing of the ports plan was a setback for President George W. Bush, who was rebuffed by fellow Republicans and stung by polls that showed strong public opposition to the sale. Dubai is one of seven sheikdoms making up the United Arab Emirates, from where two of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks came.

I think I’ll sit on the sidelines and watch this being played out.

Scientists Speak Up About Bush Muzzling

Ken AshfordEnvironment & Global Warming & Energy1 Comment

I don’t watch 60 Minutes anymore, but last night it ran a segment featuring James Hansen, a government scientist fed up with how the Bush Administration censors and edits the news about global warming.  Think Progress has an excerpt of the show:

HANSEN: In my more than three decades in the government, I’ve never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public.

PELLEY: Restrictions like this email that Hansen’s Institute received from NASA in 2004: “…there’s a new review process… The White House [is] now reviewing all climate related press releases.” Why the scrutiny of Hansen’s work? Well, his Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the source of respected, but sobering research on warming. It recently announced 2005 was the warmest year on record. Hansen started at NASA more than 30 years ago, and spent nearly all of that time studying the earth. How important is his work? We asked someone at the top – Ralph Cicerone, president of the nation’s leading institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences.

CICERONE: I can’t think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. He might argue that there’s two or three others as good, but nobody better

PELLEY: And Cicerone, who’s an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing that every leading scientist told us.

CICERONE: Climate change is really happening.

PELLEY: So what is causing the changes?

CICERONE: Well, the greenhouse gases. Carbon dioxide and methane and chloro fluoro carbons and a couple of others – which are all, the increases in their concentrations in the air are due to human activities. It’s that simple.

PELLEY: But if it is that simple, why do climate science reports look like this after they’ve been edited at the White House? With science labeled “not sufficiently reliable.” It’s a tone of scientific uncertainty that the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

BUSH: We do not how much our climate could or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it.

PELLEY: That ambiguity annoyed Hansen, so he went public a year and half ago saying this about the Bush administration in a talk at the University of Iowa.

HANSEN: I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined, inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disasters.

PELLEY: Ever since he said that, NASA’s been keeping an eye on Hansen. NASA let us sit down with him, but only with a NASA representative taping the interview. Other interviews have been denied.

HANSEN: And I object to the fact that I’m not able to freely communicate via the media. National Public Radio wanted to interview me, and they were told they would need to instead interview someone at NASA headquarters. And the comment was made that they didn’t want Jim Hansen going on the most liberal media in the nation. So, I don’t think that kind of decision should be made on that kind of basis. I think we should be able to communicate the science.

Conservatives: Grown-up Whiny Babies

Ken AshfordRepublicans2 Comments

Crying_babyThat’s not an ad hominem attack.  That’s what a couple of sociologists found out:

In the 1960s Jack Block and his wife and fellow professor Jeanne Block (now deceased) began tracking more than 100 nursery school kids as part of a general study of personality. The kids’ personalities were rated at the time by teachers and assistants who had known them for months. There’s no reason to think political bias skewed the ratings — the investigators were not looking at political orientation back then. Even if they had been, it’s unlikely that 3- and 4-year-olds would have had much idea about their political leanings.

A few decades later, Block followed up with more surveys, looking again at personality, and this time at politics, too. The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity.

The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn a little introspective.

New High School Reality Series

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

This could be very amusing, or crashingly boring.

Lifetime is going to have a reality show where high school kids run for class president.  The twist?  James Carville and Mary Matalin will act as their campaign advisors.  The details:

Most high school election campaigns are decided over bake sales and banners. Not so for the Washington-area students at the focus of Lifetime Television’s new reality show Election. Seasoned political strategists–and spouses–JAMES CARVILLE, 61, who helped orchestrate Bill Clinton’s winning campaign in 1992, and MARY MATALIN, 52, a longtime adviser to Dick Cheney, have signed on to counsel the candidates for school president. Will this be the most serious student campaign ever? "I don’t think there will be a media campaign," says Matalin. Adds Carville: "The real trick with any 61-year-old dealing with any 16-year-old is to get them to listen to a word you say. I’m remarkably unsuccessful with my own."

Book Plug

Ken AshfordWiretapping & SurveillanceLeave a Comment

HowwouldapatriotactWith millions of bloggers now out there, it’s hard to make a name for oneself. 

But that’s what First Amendment lawyer Glenn Greenwald did when he exploded on the blogosphere in November last year, writing mostly about the NSA wiretapping scandel.  Since then, his site has become a must-read for many on the left and right, and includes some original reporting.

Glenn’s been a busy boy.  How did he find time to write a book?

Read about it here.

The release date is early May, although you will apparently be able to pre-order from Amazon shortly.

Bush’s Straw Man Rhetoric

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

The AP’s Jennifer Loven has been noticing the same thing as me:

WASHINGTON – "Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," President Bush said recently.

Another time he said, "Some say that if you’re Muslim you can’t be free."

"There are some really decent people," the president said earlier this year, "who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care … for all people."

Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made such assertions.

When the president starts a sentence with "some say" or offers up what "some in Washington" believe, as he is doing more often these days, a rhetorical retort almost assuredly follows.

The device usually is code for Democrats or other White House opponents. In describing what they advocate, Bush often omits an important nuance or substitutes an extreme stance that bears little resemblance to their actual position.

He typically then says he "strongly disagrees" — conveniently knocking down a straw man of his own making.

Bush routinely is criticized for dressing up events with a too-rosy glow. But experts in political speech say the straw man device, in which the president makes himself appear entirely reasonable by contrast to supposed "critics," is just as problematic.

Because the "some" often go unnamed, Bush can argue that his statements are true in an era of blogs and talk radio. Even so, "’some’ suggests a number much larger than is actually out there," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

A specialist in presidential rhetoric, Wayne Fields of Washington University in St. Louis, views it as "a bizarre kind of double talk" that abuses the rules of legitimate discussion.

"It’s such a phenomenal hole in the national debate that you can have arguments with nonexistent people," Fields said. "All politicians try to get away with this to a certain extent. What’s striking here is how much this administration rests on a foundation of this kind of stuff."

Bush has caricatured the other side for years, trying to tilt legislative debates in his favor or score election-season points with voters.

Read the whole thing.

Not Samarra

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Well, we got snookered again.

Turns out that the big air assault on Iraq was just a lot of smoke and sand:

The press, flown in from Baghdad to this agricultural gridiron northeast of Samarra, huddled around the Iraqi officials and U.S. Army commanders who explained that the "largest air assault since 2003" in Iraq using over 50 helicopters to put 1500 Iraqi and U.S. troops on the ground had netted 48 suspected insurgents, 17 of which had already been cleared and released. The area, explained the officials, has long been suspected of being used as a base for insurgents operating in and around Samarra, the city north of Baghdad where the bombing of a sacred shrine recently sparked a wave of sectarian violence.

But contrary to what many many television networks erroneously reported, the operation was by no means the largest use of airpower since the start of the war. ("Air Assault" is a military term that refers specifically to transporting troops into an area.) In fact, there were no airstrikes and no leading insurgents were nabbed in an operation that some skeptical military analysts described as little more than a photo op. What’s more, there were no shots fired at all and the units had met no resistance, said the U.S. and Iraqi commanders.

Samarra

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

U.S. Launches Biggest Air Assault On Iraq Since Invasion

Hello?

Anybody remember "major military operations in Iraq have ended"?

Anybody remember "last throes"?

Jeez.

As for the assault itself, I’m with Kevin:

A review of military data shows that daily bombing runs and jet-missile launches have increased by more than 50 percent in the past five months, compared with the same period last year. Knight Ridder’s statistical findings were reviewed and confirmed by American Air Force officials in the region.

The numbers also show that U.S. forces dropped bombs on more cities during the last five months than they did during the same period a year ago. Airstrikes hit at least 11 cities between Oct. 1, 2004, and Feb. 28, 2005….A year later, U.S. warplanes struck at least 22 cities during the same months.

Apparently our military leaders still don’t believe we’re fighting a counterinsurgency in Iraq. Either that, or they simply don’t know how so they’re using air strikes instead. Or else they’ve given up and are just trying to hold things together until they finally get the word to withdraw.

Bombs don’t beat insurgencies. The fact that we’re increasing our reliance on them is bad news.

First Poll On Censure

Ken AshfordBush & Co., Wiretapping & SurveillanceLeave a Comment

A plurality of Americans support it.  Specifically, 46 percent of Americans (48 percent of voters) support Sen. Russ Feingold’s censure resolution, while 44 percent (43 percent of voters) oppose the idea.

Which begs the question: when Russ Feingold offered the resolution, why did Senate Democrats run away from it like he just lit a bomb?