Quick-'n-easy explanation for the outcome

I've posted my concerns about the GOP stealing elections before. And now Mark Crispin Miller has written an article that hurts my head. Key grafs:

In fact, the only way that Palin and her doddering partner can prevail in this election is by stealing it, as Bush and Cheney did (both times). Certainly the ground has been prepared for yet another stolen race, Bush/Cheney's party having made enormous strides in sabotaging our election system (while the Democrats just sat there, whistling). Now, from coast to coast, it's far more difficult (for Democrats) to register to vote, and far more difficult (for Democrats) to cast their votes, while countless (Democratic) voters have been stricken from the rolls, through purges carried out by the Department of Justice.

Thus Bush's government has legally diminished the electorate (the Roberts Court approving every step). Meanwhile, the regime also continues to suppress the (Democratic) vote illegally, either through voter "caging" prior to Election Day--or, far more effectively, by fiddling with the numbers electronically at every level, and/or simply dumping countless names (of Democrats) from the electronic voter rolls, and/or putting far too few machines in (Democratic) polling places, and/or disinforming (Democratic) voters as to when and where to cast their votes, and/or simply scaring (Democratic) voters into staying home.

That is what it takes to steal elections in America--all of that, and also something else: a quick-'n-easy explanation for the outcome. For if those final numbers are surprising, there must be some rationale that can (apparently) account for them. And that is why the Bush machine put Sarah Palin next to John McCain. By arousing the hard core of vocal Christianists, they prepared the ground for the eventual redeployment of the same canard with which they justified their last unlikely "win": that millions of believers did the trick.

Indeed, it was not just the choice of Sarah Palin, but the whole convention, that was clearly calculated not to pull in undecided and/or independent voters, but to get the fringe alone to stomp and holler for the ticket. The party platform--crafted under the command of Christianist election-rigger J. Kenneth Blackwell--is a (literally) scorched-earth "faith-based" document, calling even for a ban on stem cell research in the private sector. And the convention spectacle itself was basically one long display of cultural resentment, with lots of loud, self-righteous jeering from the stage and on the floor (with an epic show of ridicule by that fine Christian, Rudy Giuliani).

A great chance to re-assert Congressional authority and relevance

Posting at The Left Coaster, Paradox makes some astute and compelling points, arguing that now is NOT the time to ram legislation through to bail out the Republican Party BECAUSE legislation produced "fast and on the fly" is generally terrible, and we have overwhelming evidence of this administration's incompetence.

As a general rule anything Congress produces fast and on the fly is terrible legislation. As the Patriot Act so aptly demonstrates, out of nowhere vast powers and discretion were handed over without any deliberative thought or legislative processes at all. Legislation needs time to craft carefully, yet the panicked Bush administration is demanding what possibly could be a trillion dollars worth of legislation in just the next few days to save the global financial industry.

...

The whole political and ideological structure of conservatism lies in total ruins before us. Vast amounts of money and policy are at stake in somehow trying to clean up the incredible stinking mess, yet Bush and the Republicans are demanding all of the money to let their market philosophy off the hook without any new rules or safeguards in place, just hand over all of the dough now.

Now is not the time to argue how we got here, right, how convenient that if we don’t hand over our future for the next term you’ll put a gun to our head and say the world financial system will crash. Y’all said Saddam was the greatest threat ever, why should I believe you now?

Here is a great chance for Pelosi and Reid to re-assert Congressional authority and relevance, they don’t have to obstruct, not in the least, just not be lead by the nose to slam the little people with no accountability and no financial environment change moving forward. If in fact some huge bailout happens in the next forty-eight hours we can be precisely sure that has in fact happened.

Okay, so the situation is bad now. Don't make it worse simply for the sake of doing something quickly. PLEASE, Pelosi, Reid - take note.

My cynical sixth sense tells me that the republicans WILL politicize the issue. (What a surprise.) They will come up with a hastily drawn up scheme (perhaps incorporating crap they've wanted to get passed for years) and scare the democrats shirtless by threatening to accuse them of playing politics with the economy should they not acquiesce. We WILL get some crap legislation that will create FAR more problems than it will solve.

Isn't it nice?

Blogging at The Left Coaster, Turkana asks an important question, that begs its own answer.

Isn't it nice how there's always money for wars of choice and corporate bailouts, but never for less expensive indulgences such as education and health care? This government is not of, by or for you.

Unqualified to deal with economic realities of this nation

Michael Klare, writing in The Nation, analyzes republican V.P. candidate Sarah Palin's credentials to govern and finds them woefully wanting:

The question thus arises: how does Palin's experience as a maestro of petropolitics bear on her candidacy for vice president? To begin with, it should be clear that she has nothing in common with the leaders of any other state. Although it is true that Texas produces more oil per day than Alaska, Texas is no longer a petrostate, since its economy has become so much more diversified. Alaska is virtually alone in possessing a large (oil-supplied) state budget surplus--now about $5 billion--at a time when most states and the federal government are facing massive deficits and citizen groups are rising up in fury at the prospect of budget cuts. Palin is simply unqualified to deal with the demanding economic realities of any nation that is not a petrostate.

Second, Palin's only real nitty-gritty legislative experience is in measures aimed at expanding oil and gas production, to the virtual exclusion of other factors, including the environment. Although critical of the cozy ties between her GOP predecessors and Big Oil, Palin, like them, views Alaska as an unlimited source of raw materials to be exploited for maximum economic benefit, much like the leaders of comparable petrostates (Kuwait, Nigeria and Venezuela). She says she cares about the environment, but her support for drilling in ANWR and her eagerness to push the AGIA pipeline through forests in Alaska and the Yukon suggest otherwise. We can only assume that, as veep, she would favor similar policies in the Lower 48, entailing more drilling, digging and pipe-laying in environmentally sensitive areas.

Finally, much like the leaders of other petrostates that depend on oil sales to fill government coffers, Palin is leery of efforts to promote renewable sources of energy and other petroleum alternatives--the exact opposite of running mate John McCain's proclaimed objective and that of most members of Congress. At a meeting of the National Governors Association in February, Palin argued against providing subsidies for alternative energy sources, claiming that domestic sources of oil and gas--many located in Alaska--can satisfy the nation's needs for a long time to come.

Could this be the turning point?

In a hard-hitting editorial from The Nation:

Only when the press decides to take its job--and the job of US president--seriously will this election see a debate about the crucial economic and foreign policy issues at stake ...

Only in a personality-driven, contentless climate will John McCain be able to pass off his two-faced promises of reform as a populist crusade. Railing against "multimillion-dollar payouts to CEOs," McCain now promises to bring "regulatory oversight" to Washington and "transparency and accountability to Wall Street." But his rhetoric is just lipstick on a pig. ...

Senator McCain--along with every Republican and Democrat who pushed financial deregulation--is responsible for today's economic woes. McCain voted for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, signed by Bill Clinton in 1999, repealing the Glass-Steagall Act, which since 1933 had kept a wall between commercial and investment banks. When that wall came tumbling down, and when the Internet bubble burst, the housing frenzy took off, as financiers sought new ways to create paper profits.

As for the press, its chance for redemption is here, in the presidential and vice presidential debates, the first on September 26. It must put questions about the economy center stage: What has caused this crisis? Does it signal the failure of market fundamentalism, and if so, what is the alternative? What role did deregulation play in it, and what role should re-regulation play in forging a way out? Why does the government intervene when financial institutions fail but do so little to help jump-start the real economy when there is deepening economic pain for ordinary people? What do you plan to do about America's spiraling trade deficits? How will you transform the economy to ensure that all Americans enjoy the benefits of sustainable economic growth?

A virulent form of Western self-delusion

Writing in The American Conservative, John Laughland explodes some myths of "democracy" in Georgia:

As soon as he seized power, Saakashvili’s regime unleashed an orgy of arrests of officials. In the name of that old Communist chestnut, an “anti-corruption campaign,” hundreds were rounded up. For months, Georgians were treated daily to live broadcasts of ministers, officials, and judges being bundled into police cars in the middle of the night. No doubt some Georgians relished the sight of the mighty falling, but many probably feared that one day they might get the 3 a.m. knock on the door themselves.

This was all lapped up by Saakashvili’s cheerleaders in the Western media. The Georgian president has indeed achieved extraordinary success in presenting his fiefdom as a Jeffersonian paradise. This is partly due to Georgia’s use of operatives in Washington, such as John McCain’s foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, and a PR firm in Brussels. But more importantly, it is the result of a virulent form of Western self-delusion. Faced with seemingly intractable domestic problems, in which different political actors have to be balanced, Western states like to indulge in occasional but dangerous flights of foreign-policy escapism. We imagine that we can free subject peoples with our bombs. The image of a victim nation has now become an easy psychological trigger that can be applied indiscriminately to Bosnian Muslims, Iraqis, and now Georgians. These unknown peoples and nations are but a blank screen on which we project our fantasies. Our image of them says much more about us that it does about reality.

Like the world was coming to an end

BBC News carries this story of the impact of Hurrican Ike on a British Overseas Territory in the West Indies. The story contains no reference to the predicted consequence of global warning that hurricanes will become more intense and more frequent. Perhaps such a statement might seem too political in such a tragic time.

The devastation on the island of Grand Turk is absolute.

Nothing has been left untouched by the sheer power of Hurricane Ike.

It made landfall as a category four storm and the damage is immense.

The streets are strewn with debris, palm trees have been shattered and 90% of the buildings have been damaged; some are simply no longer there.

"It was terrible, the whole earth was shaking, the house was rocking," said resident Austin Dickinson, who decided to ride the storm out.

"There was a point in time when I thought everything was going to crumble on us. The house was dancing from side to side, it was like the world was coming to an end."

...

But the infrastructure on the island has been almost entirely destroyed by the storm.

Power cables are strewn around like matchsticks, the courthouse is a tangled wreck and the islanders face months if not years of rebuilding their homes.

Roland Hull, a resident of the Turks and Caicos islands, moved here after visiting Grand Turk.

When he saw the extent of the damage the British Red Cross volunteer broke down in tears.

"I'm really upset to see the state its now in," said the former schools' inspector.

Leading us to adopt the grand illusion

Blogging at the invaluable Pen and Sword web site, Jeff Huber concludes his "Y I+8 Bob Woodward" piece with this stunning indictment of the fourth estate and one of its best known icons.

Lamentably, Woodward has become the template of success in the journalistic profession: cultivate powerful connections, break one big story, then sit back, let interns write your books for you, and ride the talk show circuit.

Perhaps the greatest damage Woodward did, however, was his investigative work on Watergate back in the 70s. He, as much as anyone else in the media, led us to adopt the grand illusion that our free press would always protect us from our government. Now, we can't even condemn FOX News as the government propaganda network because it's all FOX News.

What you mean, "we", Charlie Cook

I found this quote from a Washington Post article striking:

"We have created a system where there is not a lot of shame in stretching the truth," said Charlie Cook, editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

From paragraphs two and three of that same article:

"I told Congress: 'Thanks but no thanks for that Bridge to Nowhere up in Alaska,' " Palin told the crowds at the "McCain Street USA" rallies. "If we wanted a bridge, we'll build it ourselves."

Palin's position on the bridge that would have linked Ketchikan to Gravina Island is one example of a candidate staying on message even when that message has been publicly discredited.

And in the fourth paragraph we read this:

As the presidential campaign moves into a final, heated stretch, untrue accusations and rumors have started to swirl at a pace so quick that they become regarded as fact before they can be disproved. A number of fabrications about Palin's policies and personal life, for instance, have circulated on the Internet since she joined the Republican ticket.

And by paragraph five we finally see the "L" word wrote:

Palin and John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, have been more aggressive in recent days in repeating what their opponents say are outright lies. Almost every day, for instance, McCain says rival Barack Obama would raise everyone's taxes, even though the Democrat's tax plan exempts families that earn less than $250,000.

It would be useful to know what percentage of families earn less than $250,000 to get an idea of the extent to which we can just whether or not Palin and McCain ARE repeating outright lies (as is claimed by their opponents); to evaluate the extent to which Palin and McCain are lying on this particular issue. But the Post apparently want its reader to look the information up. Or perhaps the importance of the fact of how many families earn less than $250,000 was not grasped by the Post's Jonathon Weisman, who wrote this column.

In the next paragraph, we learn of a taboo:

Fed up, the Obama campaign broke a taboo on Monday and used the "L-word" of politics to say that the McCain campaign was lying about the Bridge to Nowhere.

I wonder whose taboo was broken. If a political candidate, or a political party, or a political campaign LIES, shouldn't that be news? Shouldn't such LIES be reported? Wouldn't it go to the issue of credibility? One might think.

Next paragraph, PLEASE:

Nevertheless, with McCain's standing in the polls surging, aides say he is not about to back down from statements he believes are fundamentally true, such as the anecdote about the bridge.

In other words, if McCain believes a lie to be FUNDAMENTALLY TRUE, then he will not back down. It's all about McCain's fundamental beliefs. This would, of course, make McCain a straight shooter. Thank you Jonathan Weisman, for including that anecdote about McCain's standing in the polls surging. Because that too might explain the man's ability to countenance a lie.

Finally, we come to a truth teller:

John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said the campaign is entering a stage in which skirmishes over the facts are less important than the dominant themes that are forming voters' opinions of the candidates.

"The more the New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there and the bigger truths are she's new, she's popular in Alaska and she is an insurgent," Feehery said. "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter."

SHE'S NEW !

SHE'S POPULAR IN ALASKA !!

SHE'S AN INSURGENT !!! (wtf is THIS?)


She's 44 years old. That's not new.

She's popular in Alaska (and has been for a couple of years). That's not new.

She's an insurgent. Words fail me. Thus, from Miriam Webster's Online Dictionary;

in-sur-gent
noun

1: a person who revolts against civil authority or an established government ;

especially : a rebel not recognized as a belligerent

2: one who acts contrary to the policies and decisions of one's own political party

Exactly WHICH policies and decisions of the republican party is Governor Palin acting contrary to?

An echo of those earlier controversies

In an important Tom Dispatch piece, Michael Schwartz discusses the Iraq government's opposition to the U.S. proposed "status of force agreements." Schwartz also notes that Iraq has "revived a Saddam-era agreement with the China National Petroleum Corporation .. to develop the Ahdab oil field."

Here's a key paragraph from the Schwartz piece. Note how the Bush administration propaganda war on the U.S. public leads to some unintended consequences, suggesting that those who "make their own reality" ultimately have to deal with the consequences of that reality:

As the Iraqi government accumulates an expanding lake of petrodollars and finds ways to shake them loose from the clutches of U.S. banks and U.S. government administrators, its leaders will have the resources to pursue policies that reflect their own goals. The decline in violence, taken in the U.S. as a sign of American "success," has actually accelerated this process. It has made the Maliki regime feel ever less dependent for its survival on the American presence, while strengthening internal and regional forces resistant or antagonistic to Washington's Middle East ambitions.

These developments beg two questions:

The question remains: Can anything reverse the centripetal forces pulling Iraq from Washington's orbit? Will the President's "surge" strategy prove to have been the nail in the coffin of its hopes for U.S. dominance in the Middle East?

If this turns out to be the case, then watch out domestically. The inevitable controversy over "who lost Iraq" -- an echo of those earlier controversies over "who lost China" and "who lost Vietnam" -- is bound to be on the way.

My present guess on the November presidential elections is that McCain wins. Between voter ID laws supressing democratic votes, republican control of the voting apparatus in Florida and Ohio, and the reenergizing of the dominionist foot soldiers, I expect the 2008 electoral map to look like the 2004 map.

If the republicans steal the election for McCain (or democratic congressional ineptitude loses it), don't expect the troops to leave Iraq, so the "who lost Iraq" question will be mute for the tenure of the Palin administration.

With perks like these, just stay embedded

In a previous post, I blogged about the arrest of Amy Goodman, well known reporter for Democracy Now! at the RNC in Minnesota. Given the perks provided to the press, it's easy to understand why it would have appeared that the police / state police / FBI were targeting alternative media personnel. There were lots of goodies inside the convention centers and checking in and out was a time-consuming process. Writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, Megan Garber writes about the view from the inside of the convention centers. One might quickly conclude that THESE reporters were embedded.

I’d like to defend the media against the accusations (of being biased / petty / snobbish) hurled at them. Generally speaking, those accusations are incredibly unfair. But after eight days spent in the twin whirligigs of the Pepsi and Xcel Energy Centers, it’s hard to find the words to do it. The biggest impression that remains in the residue of the whole thing—one that isn’t new, I realize, but worth reiterating regardless—is that of the utter disconnect between the highly fortified bubbles of the convention centers themselves and the areas immediately outside, and between those bubbles and the areas less immediately outside: those expansive and diverse areas often shorthanded as, you know, “the real world.”

Part of the former disconnect is logistical in nature. The security at both conventions—on overdrive in Denver, and full-on paranoid in St. Paul—was more than a (semi-)permeable membrane protecting the centers’ interior organelles. While walls keep things out, of course, they also keep things in. And the rabid security (credentials were checked in no fewer than five locations at each convention, and the TSA-like screening lines often took nearly an hour to move through) made osmosis nearly impossible. “I wanted to go out and cover the riots,” one reporter told me, as we walked through the Xcel Center, “but, if I did, I wouldn’t be able to get back in time for the speeches.”

As a partial result of this, the nucleus of the conventions’ media coverage was contained inside the conventions’ security-designated perimeters. Inside those walls, reporters, sequestered away from the madding crowds—sequestered away, in fact, from crowds of most kinds, save for those comprised of other reporters—analyzed speeches, described “the mood on the convention floors,” gathered sound bites from delegates, and otherwise Served Our Democracy. They relaxed from their labors at corporate-sponsored “media lounges,” defined areas in which the storied scribes of the first draft of history could: swig free beer; swig free booze; swig free smoothies; down free jalapeno poppers; down free chicken fingers; down free Swedish meatballs; down free chips and salsa; down free chips and guac; get free chair massages; get free hand massages; get free facials; get free yoga instruction; get free swag; inhale flavored, colored oxygen at a free oxygen bar; play games, for free, on a Wii; or some combination thereof.

Call for compassion and care

In an Atlantic Journal Constitution commentary piece, columnist Cynthia Tucker wrote a thoughtful column expressing her hopes that compassion and caring concern be extended to all unwed pregnant teens and not just the daughters of Republican vice-presidential candidates.

For some reason, the pious social conservatives of the Republican Party did not denounce the 17-year-old daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Instead, they greeted the news of her pregnancy as evidence of the strong moral fiber of Palin and her husband, citing the fact that they have offered Bristol their comfort and support.


For a minute there, I feared that right wingers would attack the young lady as evidence of the moral failings of a liberal, anything-goes culture, or as proof that her parents had failed to provide a Christian upbringing that eschews sex outside marriage. After all, that’s what conservatives usually say when unmarried adolescent girls get pregnant.

When Jamie Lynn Spears’ pregnancy was revealed, for example, Bill O’Reilly went after her parents.

“On the pinhead front, 16-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant. The sister of Britney says she is shocked. I bet.

“Now most teens are pinheads in some ways. But here the blame falls primarily on the parents of the girl, who obviously have little control over her or even over Britney Spears. Look at the way she behaves,” O’Reilly declared.

...
Of course, the Palins reside inside the magic circle of ultra-conservative approval, so, naturally, they are judged less harshly. But since the pious arm of the GOP has extended its compassion to Bristol and her parents, perhaps it will be moved to extend that grace to every other teenager who experiences a similar crisis and decides to rear her child and every other family who struggles to lend support.

But others in similar positions haven’t been shown the same mercy. Instead, they’ve been denounced as irresponsible, foolish, immoral. The mothers-to-be have been mocked, derided as the products of a modern culture of moral relativism. Perhaps that’s all behind us now. Perhaps we’re all willing to agree that children sometimes stray even when their parents work hard to keep them on a straight and narrow path.

For invoking Bill O'Reilly's name in this thoughtful column, the attack hounds of Fox were unleashed to confront Cynthia Tucker, hoping to make her look foolish (or worse) on camera. Jay Bookman writes:

As Tucker stopped outside her house to pick up her mail, the Fox camera crew emerged out of a car parked across the street and advanced on her, yelling questions. At this point, I’ll turn it over to Tucker for the blow-by-blow account, as she recalls it:

O’Reilly guy: “Cynthia, in your column, were you comparing Bristol Palin to Jamie Lynn Spears?”

Cynthia: “In my column, I was criticizing Bill O”Reilly. And I stand by that.”

O’Reilly guy: “Bill pointed out that Jamie Lynn Spears was running around unsupervised. You know that. So you were saying that Bristol Palin was running around unsupervised.”

Cynthia: “If I said that, read that part. You’re holding the column (in your hand). Read where I said Bristol Palin was running around unsupervised.”

O’Reilly guy: “You inferred (sic) it.”

Cynthia: “I inferred O’Reilly is a hypocrite. And I stand by that. Good day, gentlemen. I’m going inside to finish my Saturday chores.”

(They ran behind me, shouting, “Why weren’t you in Minneapolis? You went to the Democratic Convention. Why didn’t you go to the Republican Convention?” I didn’t look back — just got in my car and drove into my driveway.)

For the record, the AJC sent reporters to both conventions. Tucker went to the Democratic Convention, while our more conservative colleague Jim Wooten went to the Republican Convention.

Now, “Bluster Bill” O’Reilly likes to try to intimidate people. But in this case, he didn’t have the courage to do it in person. He probably didn’t want to bite off more than he could chew — as Clint Eastwood once said, “A man has to know his limitations,” and apparently O’Reilly knows his.

ANY critical reading of Cynthia Tucker's column shows it to be both a call for compassionate care and concern for ALL pregnant unwed teenagers. The headline of her commentary reads Concern, care for Palin’s teen should extend to all.


But somehow O'Reilly sought to interpret this column as a comparison between Bristol Palin and Jamie Lynn Spears. Clearly, both are teenagers, both are pregnant, both are unwed, both are going to be mothers. But to think that is the point of Cynthia Tucker's column is miss the point comletely.


Consider these two unambiguous phrases: "pious social conservatives" and "inside the magic circle of ultra-conservative approval." Tucker's column is clearly a strong critique of the lack of compassion directed by pious social and ultra-conservative conservatives towards families in this situation. Well known media figures Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh are named, and samples of their commentary are given.


Either O'Reilly doesn't get it, or he decided to deflect the criticsm towards him as by suggesting that the column all about two teen agers.

Arresting accredited journalists

At TruthDig, Amy Goodman reports on her arrest in St. Paul while covering the Republican National Convention:

I was at the Xcel Center on the convention floor, interviewing delegates. I had just made it to the Minnesota delegation when I got a call on my cell phone with news that Sharif and Nicole were being bloody arrested, in every sense. Filmmaker Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films and I raced on foot to the scene. Out of breath, we arrived at the parking lot. I went up to the line of riot police and asked to speak to a commanding officer, saying that they had arrested accredited journalists.

Within seconds, they grabbed me, pulled me behind the police line and forcibly twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me, the rigid plastic cuffs digging into my wrists. I saw Sharif, his arm bloody, his credentials hanging from his neck. I repeated we were accredited journalists, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped my convention credential from my neck. I was taken to the St. Paul police garage where cages were set up for protesters. I was charged with obstruction of a peace officer. Nicole and Sharif were taken to jail, facing riot charges.

The attack on and arrest of me and the "Democracy Now!" producers was not an isolated event. A video group called I-Witness Video was raided two days earlier. Another video documentary group, the Glass Bead Collective, was detained, with its computers and video cameras confiscated. On Wednesday, I-Witness Video was again raided, forced out of its office location. When I asked St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington how reporters are to operate in this atmosphere, he suggested, "By embedding reporters in our mobile field force."

Embedded reporters. Consider the mind set. The US military embedded reporters to cover war. Is it a stretch to think that Police Chief Harrington assumes that the city of St. Paul is engaged in a war, requiring that reporters be embedded? If so, who is waging this "war" and against whom is this "war" being waged?

Isolation - inevitable result of hard-nosed provacative contrary stance

An interesting fact from the Energy Information Agency of the US government:

In 2007, Russia’s real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by approximately 8.1 percent, surpassing average growth rates in all other G8 countries, and marking the country’s seventh consecutive year of economic expansion. Russia’s economic growth over the past seven years has been driven primarily by energy exports, given the increase in Russian oil production and relatively high world oil prices during the period. Internally, Russia gets over half of its domestic energy needs from natural gas, up from around 49 percent in 1992. Since then, the share of energy use from coal and nuclear has stayed constant, while energy use from oil has decreased from 27 percent to around 19 percent.

As to the recently ended Russian military incursion Tom Engelhardt suggests, that, no, this isn't the beginning of a new Cold War (or even a continuation of the old one):

Right now, the Bush administration continues to have its hands militarily more than full just handling a low-level war in Iraq and a roiling one in the backlands of Afghanistan (and Pakistan). At the moment, it couldn't fight a "new Cold War" if it wanted to.

While Michael Klare observes that:

Putin prevailed this time around because he focused on geopolitical objectives, while his opponents were blindly driven by fantasy and ideology; so long as this pattern persists, he or his successors are likely to come out on top. Only if American leaders assume a more realistic approach to Russia's resurgent power or, alternatively, choose to collaborate with Moscow in the exploitation of Caspian energy, will the risk of further strategic setbacks in the region disappear.

On the Russian homefront, Alexander Golts, deputy editor of the online newspaper Yezhednevny Zhurnalthe offers a critique picked up by the Moscow Times. Golts compliments the military but chastizes the politicians. (And also calls the incursion an "aggressive, neo-imperial foreign policy"

I must admit that for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's army fought well despite the fact that its main weaponry dates back to the early 1980s. What's more, the army fought with an extremely outdated communications system and without the use of drones, night-vision equipment or precision-guided weapons.


The conflict also demonstrated that the military top brass runs the armed forces the same way they did in the 1970s. Its archaic structure prevents the military from conducting joint operations between all the branches of the armed forces under a unified command structure. The result is that land- and air-based forces operate completely independent of each other. It is anyone's guess why Tu-22 strategic bombers were used for reconnaissance purposes or for the strafing of tactical ground targets. It is also unclear why the Air Force was unable to foil Georgian anti-aircraft systems using electronic countermeasures; as a result, Georgia was able to shoot down a few Russian aircraft. Moreover, military intelligence dropped the ball when it failed to provide timely reports of Georgian troop deployment.

...
But a successful military campaign ended up being a political catastrophe for Russia, which now finds itself completely isolated by the international community. The level of isolation is not unlike when the Soviet Union was ostracized in 1983 after its fighter jets shot down a South Korean airplane full of passengers. In answer to the condemnation that Russian has received from all sides, propagandists on state television ask: "Has Russian done anything wrong? Didn't NATO send troops into Yugoslavia without a mandate from the international community? And didn't the United States do the same thing in Iraq?"


The West has never been this united against Moscow's aggressive, neo-imperial foreign policy. But this has been building up for years, based largely on the inflammatory rhetoric of Russia's top leaders. ...


To put it bluntly, the Georgian campaign was a complete and total failure of Russian diplomacy. Moscow's current isolation is the inevitable result of having developed over the last few years its hard-nosed, provocative stance against the West.

Conclusions:

The Russian economy is growing faster than the economies of the other members of the G-8.

Russia is decreasing its energy use of oil.

Russia's top politician's understand geo-politics far better than the current US administration's ideologues.

Russia's weaponry is 20+ years old, it's military communication systems out of date, and it's military didn't use drones, night vision equipment, or "precision-guided weapons" (Russia is not in an arms race with the US. The US is in an arms race with itself.)

Russia's military command structure is out-dated and not integrated (good, so is ours).

Russia's air force was unable to use electronic counters to Georgian anti-air craft weapons (most likely supplied by the US).

Russian military intelligence is not so hot either.

At least one publication seems able to offer FAR more criticism of the Russian military and political situation than the New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times etc., etc., ever offer of the US military and political counterparts.

Okay. All good. Iran, which spends 1% of what the US does on defense remains our biggest threat.

Nobody's military is out "to get us."

So I can sleep safe tonight.

Well, not while Cheney or McCain are or may be in the White House.

Becoming associated with the same sloppy arrogance as the MSM

I agree with Al Giordono of Narco News:

Most members of the commercial media don't want to face what everybody else knows - that as institutions go, that of "the media" is as hated or more so than George W. Bush and the US Congress.

Unfortunately, in recent days, too many bloggers and their commenters have forgotten that truth, too.

Bloggers, in general, claim to understand just how much the public distrusts the media. We bloggers have been "running against the media" from the get-go. It's one of the biggest keys to our success: that readers turn to us instead of the commercial media it distrusts. The one thing that could most rapidly destroy that for us would be if we became, in the public's mind, associated with the same sloppy arrogance which it associates with the media.

That ought to be a no brainer. But in recent days, too many bloggers and their commenters [sic] have aped the worst qualities of the commercial media in such a way as to allow the McCain campaign and the far right to lump us in with the reviled commercial media to make us, too, the receptacle of that public hatred.

It's about the "unvetted diaries," stupid.

It hasn't been just in recent days. The venom directed at Senator Clinton disgusted me (I understand - it started with the MSM). Same for the hatred directed at Senator Obama. The venom of which I speak is that which secreted from the fangs of some of the SCLB's - the So Called Liberal DailyKos and Booman Tribune Blogs, to name two. The hatred of which I speak exploded with atomic enmity from Larry Johnson's No Quarter Blog (Johnson is certainly no liberal; but he was and remains an ardent Clinton supporter).


The rumors-mongering I read (in the comments sections) of some of the SCLB's about who in the Palin family was the mother of Trig was absolutely disgusting, horrifying stuff. Worthy of the Free Republic. When a "news source" or "internet community" puts that kind of speculation out here in cyberspace, where will stay (forever, almost) and subsequently the speculation turns out to be FALSE, at that point the blog hits a junction known as Credibility Gap. Juvenile crap - junior high school crap, high school crap, Jerry Springer crap. And when you've covered yourself with crap - it takes a LOT of scrubbing, a lot of apologizing, a lot of mea culpa's, and a lot of time to have any shot at returning to relevance or legitimacy.


One can wear a DFH tag with pride (to the extent it represents opposing the invasion, occupation and destruction of Vietnam, the supporting of civil rights for African-Americans, of equal pay for equally responsible jobs for women for African-Americans, for Hispanics, for government to PROTECT workers and citizens from corporate pollution, corporate endangerment, and a whole host of issues commonly assumed to be part of the democratic party's core "platform") when it comes to standing up for and speaking out the belief that government ought to serve the common weal.


But when the so-called liberals or progessives start to include smears, lies and character assassination as part of their chatter, count me out. Those tactics are mean-spirited, appealing to the basest instincts.


The unvetted diaries and worse - the unvetted comments - could easily undermine a lot of otherwise decent intentions.


A little civility, please.


For all the MSM's belittling attitudes towards bloggers over the years (interesting all the major newspapers seem to have their own blogs now), it is ironic now that "bloggers in general" are now casually conjoined by the McCain campaign (the Republican party and it's far right dominionist footsoldiers).


When two sides fight in the mud, the side that claims they seek to win the mud fight in order to ressurect a cleaner, safer, nobler past will win the audience UNLESS the other side can make the point, the mud's the reason we're in this fight - the longer they made the rules, the muddier things have become, and we seek to win the fight in order to take away their mud-making machine.