But Who's Counting?

On Thursday, the U.S. military said an American F/A-18 jet-fighter fired a missile at a house in Basra the previous night after Iraqi soldiers came under small-arms fire. Two militants were killed in the airstrike, the U.S. said.

"Coalition forces are unaware of any civilians killed in the strike but are currently looking into the matter," the military said. Iraqi witnesses and officials said at least three civilians were among the dead.

"While we were preparing for evening prayer, U.S. aircraft bombed this house, we rushed to save survivors but in vain," a neighbor identified only as Haj Juwad told AP Television News. "The father, mother and a young boy were killed and three others were buried under rubble. We evacuated two people and one is still under the rubble."

  Yahoo

Always unaware of casualties, our military. As if an airstrike in a city were likely to kill only two people. Enemy, at that.

And this is only one incident of many today, including one in which an American soldier was killed, bringing the “total” to 4,012. I put quotes on total, because that number does not include mortally wounded soldiers who were dragged off the scene before they expired. Nor does it include soldiers who died from something other than “battle.” Suicide, for instance.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Another Candidate

Former Georgia Republican Congressman and leader in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, Bob Barr, who was "[an] outspoken foe of abortion [who] had acquiesced to his then-wife having an abortion in 1983, [and who] had invoked a legal privilege during his 1985 divorce proceeding so he could refuse to answer questions on whether he'd cheated on his second wife with the woman who is now his third" [source], and who is now a Libertarian, will be running for president as an Independent. (Can I do the run-on sentence thing, or what?)

Let's see where we stand now: Barr, Clinton, McCain, Nader, Obama, and Paul. Did I miss anybody?

Bob, I think it's an exercise in futility, but a way to trip around spending somebody else's money, I guess.

....and hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Our Image Is Improving!

Maybe they're anticipating a change of administration.

[A BBC World Service] survey, conducted in 34 countries, found that positive views of U.S. influence have risen by about 4 percentage points over the past year. The average positive rating was 35 percent, versus an average negative rating of 47 percent.

[...]

The United States was viewed most negatively by people in Turkey and Egypt, where 73 percent of those polled had bad impressions of U.S. influence. Germany followed at 72 percent, Lebanon at 67 percent, Canada at 62 percent, Australia at 58 percent and Argentina and Mexico at 56 percent.

[...]

U.S. influence in the world was viewed most positively in Kenya, the Philippines, Israel, Nigeria, Ghana, and Central America, where well over 50 percent of those questioned had positive views of the United States.

  Yahoo

Central America? What are we paying them?

Well, at least we were still more popular than Iran.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Racism On Air

Discussing Sen. Barack Obama on the April 1 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews asked Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO): "Let me ask you about how he -- how's he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?"

Earlier in the show, referring to Obama's bowling performance at a March 29 campaign stop at Pleasant Valley Lanes in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Matthews teased the segment with McCaskill by asking, "[C]an Obama woo more regular voters -- you know, the ones who actually do know how to bowl?" As Media Matters for America noted, on the March 31 edition of Hardball, Matthews said of Obama: "[T]his gets very ethnic, but the fact that he's good at basketball doesn't surprise anybody, but the fact that he's that terrible at bowling does make you wonder."

  Media Matters

Wonder what? If his mother really is white?

Regular people – as opposed to African Americans?

Still Speaking of Damaged Brains

Maru, in unique Maru style, recounts Beavis Bush's latest gaffe, in his own unique style, during his visit to Romania. Check it out. You'll laugh. You'll cry.

Update 3:45pm:

Apparently this isn’t the first time the rude, uncultured King of the World has pulled this particular uncouth stunt.

In Colombia in 2004, he sought to end a session with reporters even when Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was ready to take more questions. In Belgium in 2005, he tried to cut off a news conference before his host, NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, got a chance to speak his fill.

  Yahoo

Bush Junior

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Thursday he planned to launch more security crackdowns like the one in Basra against "criminal gangs" in Baghdad.

  Yahoo

Because the "crackdown" in Basra went so well?!?!?

Even the Bushies are trying to distance themselves from that fiasco. But it gets better.

"We did not make mistakes, but we had points of weakness," al-Maliki said of the performance of the security forces. "We discovered that we have a shortage of appropriate weapons for the fight in Basra which we will work quickly to end."

Has al-Maliki been injecting Botox, too?

This is really quite funny in a pathetic way. You discover your shortage of weapons after you attack? Great planning, dude.

I wonder how he plans to quickly end the fight now that he got it started. Leave?

And his remarks of course precisely describe the entire U.S. situation in Iraq, except that mistakes were definitely made. And al-Maliki’s confidence aside, mistakes were made in his Basra fiasco, too. In fact, in both situations, the first mistake was going in at all.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it." --Mark Twain

Had he lived till now, he no doubt would have stopped wondering.

Speaking of Damaged Brains

Oliver Stone is making a new movie to come out by the end of the year. It's all about Dubya.

In the director's own words, the film will address the question: "How did Bush go from being an alcoholic bum to the most powerful figure in the world?"

[...]

ABC News, which has read an early copy of the screenplay, describes it as a "warts-and-all portrayal", though judging by its account of the script it might more accurately be called a "warts-and-yet more warts" portrait.

  UK Guardian

What else is there?

Botox on the Brain

Botulinum neurotoxin type A, sold as Allergan Inc.'s Botox remedy for wrinkles, can move from its injection site to the brain, a study shows.

  Bloomberg

And that’s bad – the brain is supposed to have wrinkles. That was a joke.

Do you think this is what happened to John Kerry? That was not a joke.

You know, I just don’t think I’d want to inject something named Botulinum neurotoxin into anything I didn’t want harmed. Both words sound like red flags to me.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Speaking of the EPA

Officials of 18 states are taking the EPA back to court to try to force it to comply with a Supreme Court ruling that rebuked the Bush administration for inaction on global warming.

[...]

Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia, plus representatives of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the cities of New York and Baltimore, and several environmental organizations.

  TPM

Go ahead on.

Bill Really Wants to Get Back in the WH

A private meeting between Bill Clinton and California superdelegates erupted when the former president was reminded of Bill Richardson's decision to endorse Barack Obama.

"It was like someone pulled the pin from a grenade," according to San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross.

"'Five times to my face (Richardson) said that he would never do that,' a red-faced, finger-pointing Clinton erupted," the two write in Wednesday's paper.

[...]

"It was kind of strange later when he took the stage and told everyone to 'chill out,' " one delegate told us.

[...]

"It was one of the worst political meetings I have ever attended," one superdelegate said.

  Raw Story

War Criminals

Vanity Fair has a lengthy article on the torture memos and the chain of responsibility for torture at US facilities, particularly Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Excerpt:

We reviewed the definition of torture, as set out in the 1984 Convention, which is binding on 145 countries, including the United States. Torture includes “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person.”

[...]

This total ban was reinforced in 1984 with the adoption of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which criminalizes torture and complicity in torture.

[...]

The fingerprints of the most senior lawyers in the administration were all over the design and implementation of the abusive interrogation policies. Addington, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, and Yoo became, in effect, a torture team of lawyers, freeing the administration from the constraints of all international rules prohibiting abuse.

[...]

[Jim] Haynes, as Rumsfeld’s general counsel, was the most senior lawyer in the Pentagon, a position he would retain until a month ago, when he resigned—“returning to private life,” as a press release stated.

  Vanity Fair

More secret memos to emerge. And resignations should not put these people outside the reach of war crimes trials. Which we’ll never see happen, of course. At least as long as they stay in the U.S., and maybe the UK.

In my efforts to get to the heart of this story, and its possible consequences, I visited a judge and a prosecutor in a major European city, and guided them through all the materials pertaining to the Guantánamo case. The judge and prosecutor were particularly struck by the immunity from prosecution provided by the Military Commissions Act. “That is very stupid,” said the prosecutor, explaining that it would make it much easier for investigators outside the United States to argue that possible war crimes would never be addressed by the justice system in the home country—one of the trip wires enabling foreign courts to intervene.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Speaking of Pelicans

Before the EPA and the Endangered Species Act, the brown pelican went extinct down here on Galveston Island, along with other bay creatures, due to pesticide use and harbor activity. This is not a unique story, and not a particularly old one. And yet the Bush Administration has singularly set about dismantling and obstructing the agencies put in place to preserve our natural environment. I was trying to find some information on the brown pelican’s demise and recovery here, but the first thing I found was an interesting current local story I hadn’t heard yet.

March 28, 2008:

Port of Galveston officials may never know who buried an entire railroad tank car filled with thousands of gallons of liquid, including a degraded form of the pesticide DDT. But they’re leaning toward the storage tank theory.

[...]

Initial samples taken by the port’s environmental consultants detected DDE, a breakdown product of DDT. The federal government banned DDT in the 1970s. It was blamed for devastating wildlife, particularly birds, and probably causes cancer in humans. Tests also detected the pesticide Endosulfan, a neurotoxin. Ingestion of even small amounts of Endosulfan has been linked to seizures and death.

[...]

The Port of Galveston, once controlled by private interests, became an (sic) public enterprise in 1940. There is no institutional memory of anyone burying the car since that time, said Bernie Curran, director of administration at the port.

  Galveston Daily News

I would think that any public enterprise would have had to keep records, and done so, unless they didn’t want anyone to know they were burying the tank. And then, why would you bury a tank in the first place unless it had something in it that you knew you would have to dispose of, presumably at a fair cost if it were indeed banned chemicals? And that would lead me to suspect it was done after 1970. (Is it the only one?)

The article speculates that the tank might have been buried by a private enterprise before 1940 for use as an underground storage tank. I think that’s very doubtful. The discovery of the tank car was only made when crews were installing a storm drain. A private enterprise using large amounts of pesticides wouldn’t completely bury a tanker to store them, would they? Not very handy to get to when you need it. It was never registered with the State as a storage tank. And, by the way, the State says it’s not going to investigate.

But, back to the brown pelican in Galveston. The following comes from an article by Gary Clark.

Four years before the ban on DDT, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries together with the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission started reintroducing brown pelicans to Louisiana. With the DDT ban, nesting success of the pelicans increased, and by 1979, nearly a thousand birds fledged on North Island in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay.

In 1990, brown pelicans---probably coming from Louisiana---returned to Galveston Bay.

My wife recalls that I jumped up and down like a little boy when I spotted a brown pelican in Galveston in the summer of 1990. And well I might have acted like a kid, because I hadn’t seen the bird anywhere near Galveston in 30 years!

Brown pelicans began nesting on Little Pelican Island in Galveston Bay in 1994. By 2001, their numbers in the bay had increased to 2,200 breeding pairs.

The Houston Audubon Society played a large role in the recovery of brown pelicans by managing the islands in Galveston Bay where the birds nest. Due to successful recovery of brown pelicans, the National Audubon Society recommended removing the birds from the endangered species lists of Texas and Louisiana.

  Nature Photographers

I can’t imagine Galveston without brown pelicans. That would be just too sad. So let’s get this administration out of Washington and far, far away from any power, and send packing those Republican congresstools who do its bidding. Not just for Galveston’s pelicans (and me), because that’s not the only thing they threaten, but for the sake of the whole world.