If McCain Wins, What Happens in Iraq? “100 Years” a Frightening Prospect

At a town meeting in New Hampshire this election season, John McCain made a rather startling statement: when asked about how long he thought troops should stay in Iraq, he said it would be fine with him if troops remained for “maybe 100” years.

From MSNBC:

First, if McCain doesn’t envision a 100-year American front-line combat presence in Iraq, how long is he willing to keep U.S. forces in that role? So far, all he has said is that the United States should withdraw only if it concludes that the Iraq mission is unachievable or when it has achieved success, which he defines as the establishment of “a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state.”

McCain hasn’t said how long he would keep fighting to reach that demanding goal. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of McCain’s closest Senate allies, recently said he thinks that McCain would maintain current U.S. troop levels in Iraq through his entire four-year presidential term if military commanders recommended that course to maintain stability there.

Since his original declaration, McCain has repeatedly insisted he doesn’t foresee a century of American combat in Iraq but rather a military presence “after the war is over,” as the United States has maintained in Germany, Japan, and South Korea.

As Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dead points out, we’re not exactly welcome in Iraq. They don’t want us there. People in the region don’t want us there. Why would they? We’ve destroyed a culture. We’ve killed hundreds of thousands (some put the figure at over a million) of their people, most of whom were innocent bystanders. We’re responsible for so much death and destruction. The danger to our troops isn’t going to magically disappear – people are angry, and rightfully so.

Hopefully statements like this will help prevent this guy from becoming president. Plenty of people are against the war in Iraq, but considering the ongoing battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the race and gender issues in play and the usual spate of conservative ‘value voting’ i.e. gays, guns & God, is it enough?

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Flickr user sskennel

President Bush Claims to be a Green Local Food Proponent in Latest Speech

Ha ha, President Bush. You’re such a joker. Amidst depressing news of starving children, celebrities flying personal chefs across oceans to prepare a plate of pasta and farmers salivating over the prospect of cutting down trees in the rainforest, your hilarious comments in your most recent speech really gave us a much-needed laugh. What’s that? You weren’t joking? But in your speech the other day, you said something really funny about food prices and your own take on the situation.

From the White House:

In terms of the international situation, we are deeply concerned about food prices here at home and we’re deeply concerned about people who don’t have food abroad. In other words, scarcity is of concern to us. Last year we were very generous in our food donations, and this year we’ll be generous as well. As a matter of fact, we just released about $200 million out of the Emerson Trust as part of a ongoing effort to address scarcity.

One thing I think that would be — I know would be very creative policy is if we — is if we would buy food from local farmers as a way to help deal with scarcity, but also as a way to put in place an infrastructure so that nations can be self-sustaining and self-supporting. It’s a proposal I put forth that Congress hasn’t responded to yet, and I sincerely hope they do.

Since you said this with a straight face and seeming sincerity, you may be surprised to hear that many of us are shaking our heads in disbelief, looking at each other for answers – what proposals? Did we miss something? Did you sneak something in to Congress under a pseudonym? Hello? [Silence]

Link [EnviroWonk]

Photo credit: Flickr user azrainman

McCain, Clinton Both Back the Insanely Stupid Gas Tax Holiday Idea

How do you encourage people to stop using something – give them easier access to more of it? Idiotic as it is, that seems to be the answer as far as presidential hopefuls John McCain and Hillary Clinton are concerned. Their proposed ‘gas tax holiday’ has been slammed by economists, and anyone with half a brain should be able to see that it won’t work.

The proposal involves cutting the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day, giving Americans a ‘summer break’ from paying the tax, which is put to use building roads and bridges nationwide. Obama is the only one in this three-ring circus that thinks it’s a bad idea, and Clinton in turn has accused him of ‘being out of touch with ordinary Americans’. Yeah, because in this country of brilliant thinkers, the thought process stops after they hear the words ‘tax cut’.

From MSNBC.com:

Economists said that since refineries cannot increase their supply of gasoline in the space of a few summer months, lower prices will just boost demand and the benefits will flow to oil companies, not consumers.

“You are just going to push up the price of gas by almost the size of the tax cut,” said Eric Toder, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington.

Obama criticized the plan as pure politics and said the only way to lower the price of gas is to use less oil.

“This isn’t an idea designed to get you through the summer, it’s an idea designed to get them through an election.”

Clinton promised to make up for the tax break by imposing a windfall profits tax on oil companies, but hasn’t seemed to consider the fact that she’s essentially offering bags of heroin to a group of junkies who just started considering rehab.

Continuing the cheap gas trend in America won’t do anything to reduce our dependence on oil. It won’t encourage people to cut back. It won’t bolster further investment into alternative energy sources. It’s a dirty bandage on a weeping gangrenous wound.

People might not even get any relief from the tax cut, according to some economists who predict that refineries will likely keep some of it for themselves rather than passing it on to consumers.

At least we can console ourselves with the fact that one of the three main presidential contenders sees the truth to this. It’s not much, but it’s something.

Link [MSNBC]

Photo credit: Flickr user ~~zorro~~

Un-Effing-Believable: Military Contractor Used Armored Vehicles to Transport Hookers

Perhaps I’m still a bit naïve, but I find this news so crazy I can hardly believe it’s real. The Huffington Post is reporting that testimony from a panel of whistleblowers in the Senate yesterday revealed a shocking bit of info about DynCorp, a military contractor. Seems that a DynCorp manager used an armored car to transport prostitutes to hotels that the company operates. As the car was occupied by hookers, a DynCorp employee had to go without the armored protection and was killed as a result.

From The Huffington Post:

Naturally, this will lead many to question whether its appropriate for DynCorp to be awarded with future military contracts, but the more fitting question is whether or not DynCorp should have been awarded a contract in Iraq in the first place. Because, you see, this is not the first time DynCorp employees have been implicated in running prostitution rings abroad.

In 2002, DynCorp workers were involved in a Bosnia sex-slave trade, and due to some complicated loopholes, these people are able to get away with it. Some of the girls involved were as young as 12. The DynCorp employees escaped prosecution for crimes such as these made overseas, practically giving them free license to do whatever the hell they please.

These are the shady criminals America has doing its bidding in Iraq. Does anyone else feel the need to take a shower right about now?

Link [Huffington Post]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

China’s Down to 12 Days Worth of Coal and Counting – What Does it Mean to Us?

What would it mean to the world if China went dark? What would it mean to America?

That’s what people are starting to ponder as news has hit that most power stations in China are down to just 12 days worth of coal, and some have less than a week. That’s three days less than a month ago. Coal provides China with 70% of its electricity, and while production is up this year, demand is rapidly growing in this country of nearly 1.3 billion people. This report, which came out of Beijing on April 23rd, doesn’t elaborate on the exact reasons for the shortage.

One reason reserves are low is the dark and cold winter that has just passed, and a hotter than average upcoming summer along with lower than average rainfall is going to continue the strain. This summer’s Olympic Games will also put a squeeze on the country’s coal and power supply, something the Chinese government is currently scrambling to manage without much luck; the figures involved just can’t seem to agree to a compromise. China started importing coal last year, but so far, it hasn’t made much of a dent in the shortage.

Never mind, for the moment, what this means to the environment, as coal is the dirtiest of all fuels that produce energy. Never mind that according to many estimates, pollution is the number one cause of death in China. Never mind that China has plans to build nearly one coal plant a week for the next decade, causing a huge increase in greenhouse gas emissions that might just completely undo the efforts of every other nation in the world. It’s on the tail of the United States, headed toward becoming the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.

Most of us are aware of just how pervasive Chinese-manufactured products are in our everyday lives. Trying to live entirely without anything that has been produced in China is likely to be fruitless, unless you’re living very low-tech out in the woods or the desert somewhere. The average American family couldn’t do it while maintaining their current lifestyle. What would happen if imports of Chinese goods temporarily stopped? Many American businesses rely on China for their daily operations. If they don’t have their China-made products, they don’t have anything to manufacture and/or sell. In an already damaged economy, this could be really bad news.

Not to mention the fact that China’s leaders aren’t exactly known for playing well with others. Constant expansion plus imperialism plus a desperate need for a particular asset in order to retain the current status quo could equal very, very bad news for the world. Who’s to say that, backed into a corner, China wouldn’t begin to wield its frightening potential for power as a weapon against the rest of us? The US-China trade deficit doesn’t exactly put us in a good position if such a thing were to happen. Our government has already allowed the destruction of our industrial base for the good of a communist country’s industrialization.

In the end, won’t there be a price to pay for the cheap goods and labor that Americans have enjoyed courtesy of the Chinese? We’re all so embroiled in a society of more, more, more. We are deep into a mess of dependence on China. Think about what’s in your own house. If someone suddenly came in and took away everything that was made in China, what would you have left? Not much.

Many are predicting that China will find a way to manage the situation fairly quickly, and it will all blow over. Americans will go on with their obsessive consumerist ways, constantly buying more than we need, and continuing to rely on China for a startling quantity of the products used daily in this country. I hate to say it, but, a close call won’t teach Americans anything – in fact, the vast majority of us probably don’t know about the coal situation in China and don’t care.

Some are of the viewpoint that China will soon realize that continuation of their current pace of growth is simply impossible, and they’ll be forced to slow down. This is a fairly optimistic take on the situation, and maybe – just maybe – we could see a change in daily life in America if that were to happen.

No one can accurately predict the consequences of this coal scenario; but one thing we Americans might want to consider is learning Mandarin – just in case.

Link [news.com.au]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons + Wikimedia Commons

Big Brother Says: The Planet is A-OK! Go Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Destruction!

If you’re a conspiracy theorist like (I must admit) I am, this sort of news probably makes you want to build that off-grid cabin in the woods sooner rather than later. Reuters reports that nearly 900 scientists have told the Union of Concerned Scientists about political interference in their environment-related work:

The nonprofit environmental organization said its investigation of EPA was in line with previous probes of other U.S. agencies which found “significant administration manipulation of federal science.”

“Our investigation found an agency in crisis,” said Francesca Grifo of the Union of Concerned Scientists, referring to the Environmental Protection Agency. “Distorting science to accommodate a narrow political agenda threatens our environment, our health and our democracy itself.”

Nearly 100 scientists said the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was the main offender.

One scientist wrote that the OMB and the White House decreased the stringency of proposed regulations for political reasons through hidden influence such as lobbying.

Naturally, the government denies it, saying scientific findings were “balanced with policy concerns.”

This stinks of historical revisionism. When is deception of the people ever okay? I’m waiting for the day the Thought Police start showing up at scientists’ laboratories and homes arresting them for distributing ‘propaganda’ that doesn’t fit in with the contemporary party line.

“War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength.” It’s all happening, people, and no, I’m not currently wearing a hat made out of tin foil.

Link [Reuters]

Photo: 1984comic.com

Patrick Moore of Greenpeace Falls to Dark Side; World Collectively Yawns

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore has defected, advocating for something he once fought against, and our response is: who cares?

Moore, who once stringently opposed underground nuclear testing, is now supporting the use of nuclear power. He believes that building hundreds of nuclear power plants is the only viable alternative to coal-fire electricity generation, stating that wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal and other renewable energy sources simply don’t have enough potential.

Moore now represents the Clean Air and Safe Energy Coalition, a nuclear-backed energy group, and has also taken on several causes that don’t jive with Greenpeace values, such as old-growth logging. He claims that a background in science has caused him to see things differently.

From Idaho Statesman:

“We don’t believe we have been making too much electricity,” he said. “We believe we’ve been making energy with the wrong technologies.”

His critics, like Andrea Shipley, executive director of the Snake River Alliance, say he has simply sold out.

“The only reason Patrick Moore is backing something as unsafe and risky as nuclear power is he is being paid by the nuclear industry to do so,” Shipley said.

There are those who will try to turn this into a big to-do about the reality of climate change, but the fact is, his credibility has gone down the drain, and one more person cheerleading dumb causes like nuclear energy won’t amount to much. Patrick Moore becoming a Sith Lord isn’t going to put a dent in the cause.

Link [IdahoStatesman]

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Germany: Bush’s ‘Losership’ Climate Change Speech the Work of a Talking Monkey

Oh, the shameful glimpses we get into what the world thinks of our country.

Most of us are aware of (and actually care about) the fact that the United States has lost its esteem in the world arena under Bush. It’s not just the hundreds of mind-blowingly idiotic things that he’s done over the years. It’s the incredibly dumb things that come out of his mouth. I don’t think I’ll ever forget when he said, “Too many OB/GYN’s aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.” (WTF?)

The latest gaffe is sort of a combination of the two - stupid ideas, stupid statements. And the leaders of countries like France and Germany are rolling their eyes and pronouncing Dubya a ‘neanderthal’. Hilarious! From Reuters:

“The president gave a disappointing speech,” German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said in a statement issued in Berlin headlined “Gabriel criticises Bush’s Neanderthal speech. Losership, not Leadership”.

“The American administration is starting to awaken,” French climate change ambassador Brice Lalonde said. “It’s a bit late.”

“We are looking forward to whoever succeeds the present (U.S.) administration, because we believe we can probably only do better,” South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told reporters.

Losership, not leadership. Fantastic. I think most of us agree!

Link [Reuters] via [The Lede]

Photo: Wikimedia Commons + Wikimedia Commons

What Would You Buy with the $3 Trillion Spent on the Iraq War?

When all is said and done, the Iraq war will cost America $3 trillion dollars. That’s a figure that’s difficult to fully comprehend, and some may wonder how it was calculated. The Washington Post broke it down:

Some people will scoff at that number, but we’ve done the math. Senior Bush administration aides certainly pooh-poohed worrisome estimates in the run-up to the war. Former White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey reckoned that the conflict would cost $100 billion to $200 billion; Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld later called his estimate “baloney.” Administration officials insisted that the costs would be more like $50 billion to $60 billion. In April 2003, Andrew S. Natsios, the thoughtful head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said on “Nightline” that reconstructing Iraq would cost the American taxpayer just $1.7 billion. Ted Koppel, in disbelief, pressed Natsios on the question, but Natsios stuck to his guns. Others in the administration, such as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, hoped that U.S. partners would chip in, as they had in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, or that Iraq’s oil would pay for the damages.

The end result of all this wishful thinking? As we approach the fifth anniversary of the invasion, Iraq is not only the second longest war in U.S. history (after Vietnam), it is also the second most costly — surpassed only by World War II.

Why doesn’t the public understand the staggering scale of our expenditures? In part because the administration talks only about the upfront costs, which are mostly handled by emergency appropriations. (Iraq funding is apparently still an emergency five years after the war began.) These costs, by our calculations, are now running at $12 billion a month — $16 billion if you include Afghanistan. By the time you add in the costs hidden in the defense budget, the money we’ll have to spend to help future veterans, and money to refurbish a military whose equipment and materiel have been greatly depleted, the total tab to the federal government will almost surely exceed $1.5 trillion.

Have you ever thought about how much $3 trillion dollars really is? Like, in terms of what else you could buy with that money? Well, 3trillion.org has, and they’ve created an awesome website where you can add hundreds of items to your shopping cart and still not even come close to spending that much.

The concept is simple: you browse their website for items to add to your cart. They can be as large in scale as wind turbines to power all of the United States ($1,000,000,000,000.00), or as small as a copy of the ‘Inconvenient Truth’ DVD ($10.00). You can even buy yourself a boob job, the New York Yankees, a custom rollercoaster or launch your ashes into space. The possibilities are endless, and if you don’t see something you want, you can add it.

It’s seriously very hard to spend $3 trillion. I still didn’t end up making it all the way; after over an hour on the site my grand total was $2,885,172,839,274.00 for all of the following:

• Universal Health Care for Every American
• Fight AIDS in developing nations
• Search for a cure to cancer
• Switch to solar power (all of America)
• Fund research for alternatives to oil
• National rapid transit system
• Clean up pollution (in major cities)
• Achieve universal literacy
• End hunger and poverty related diseases
• Increase sustainable organic produce in the US
• Finish repairing the damage done by Hurricane Katrina
• Cure a deadly disease
• Sustainable agriculture education, worldwide
• Non-violent leadership training (1 year) for 10 million leaders
• Food, shelter & vet care for unwanted pets
• End animal testing
• K-12 arts and music education
• New clothing, shoes, coats and schools supplies for 10 million children
• Build 100 new schools
• Pay 1,000 teachers’ salaries
• Give all firefighters a raise
• Plant 1,000,000 trees
• National Park Service Annual Budget
• Help rebuild Iraq
• Send Bush to Mars (1 way ticket)

After all that do-good spending, I still had over three billion dollars left over for things like homes for myself and all of my friends and family, organic vegetarian groceries for a year, home brewery equipment, a hammock and the Essential Leonard Cohen CD. You know, after expending so much energy on helping the world, you really want to kick back and relax a little.

It’s staggering to realize how much could have been achieved with that money. Instead of putting it to use actually doing all of the things that we dream about doing to make the world a better place, that money is funding pointless carnage and destruction. The Bush administration wants us to believe that this money was well spent, but we should know otherwise.

Maybe putting a price tag on the steaming bag of shit we’ve been sold as a nation will help people wake up and realize how much this war is affecting the world. If over 1 million dead Iraqis and 4,000 dead Americans isn’t enough for you - not to mention the destabilization of an entire region - perhaps what Americans really need to come to grips with the reality of this situation is to see how that money could have solved all of their complaints. Snowed under by hospital bills? We could have a whole new system in place by now! Nervously living in a region where a natural disaster could easily wipe out your entire community? You could have levees, shelters and emergency backup plans galore!

So please, everyone, buy away. Send $3 trillion gift certificates to everyone you know via the 3trillion.org website and urge them to fantasy-shop to their hearts’ content. The point isn’t gluttony and greed, though by all means have fun shopping: the point is awareness. We as a nation are letting our government get away with this. The power of the people is stronger than we realize, whether it’s put in motion through protests, boycotts, the purchasing decisions we make or simply exercising our rights as citizens of a democratic nation to vote accordingly.

Link [3trillion] + [Washington Post]

Photo Credits: Flickr user FredoAlvarez, Wikimedia Commons + Wikimedia Commons

Seven Years and Tons of Lost Credibility Later: Bush Decides Greenhouses Gasses Need to Be Curbed, Color Us Unimpressed

Am I the only one who could give two shits about Bush’s new plan (just announced today) to curb Greenhouse Gases? That’ll be left to the next President, this guy is just riding out the clock after what will go down as the worst Presidency in history. George Bush is an asshole and we can’t wait for him to move back onto the Ranch and let Obama get to work fixing all his mistakes. Global Warming will be one of them, we don’t need that douche nozzle chiming in now on how important it is to go green. I’d rather hear what Paris Hilton has planned to fight rising CO2 emissions.

The AP has it:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Revising his stance on global warming, President Bush on Wednesday proposed a new target for stopping the growth of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.

The president also called for putting the brakes on greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants within 10 to 15 years.

“To reach our 2025 goal, we will need to more rapidly slow the growth of power sector greenhouse gas emissions so that they peak within 10 to 15 years, and decline thereafter,” Bush said in excerpts of the speech released early by the White House.

“By doing so, we will reduce emission levels in the power sector well below where they were projected to be when we first announced our climate strategy in 2002. There are a number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies.”

Bush was not to outline a specific proposal, but he’ll lay out a strategy for “realistic” emission reduction targets and “principles” he thinks Congress should follow in crafting global warming legislation.

Link [Breitbart]

Photo: Flickr user Tootsfontaine

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