No Money for Firefighters, Thanks to Austerity

Welcome to the wonders of austerity!

Grist: Tea Partiers who watched gleefully as the sequester slashed government spending are welcome to douse forest fires near their homes with teapots full of Earl Grey this summer. Across-the-board budget cuts mean federal wildfire fighting efforts could be overwhelmed.

The U.S. Forest Service will hire 500 fewer firefighters this year and 50 fewer fire engines will be available than previously expected, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced this week. The Interior Department also plans to pare back its firefighting crews.

The seasonal firefighting jobs are going up in smoke because of Congress’s inability to come up with a national spending plan. President Obama called for spending cuts and tax increases to help balance the budget, but Republicans would have none of the latter.

As they always are when it comes to anything other than military spending, prison-building, or corporate welfare, Republicans are being penny wise and pound foolish. In insisting on deep cuts to spending and in cheering on the sequester, they've managed to save $50 million in Forest Service spending -- or what the pentagon spent about every half hour on a randomly chosen day in 2013. So we'll throw $1.6 billion in a day at defense against foreign armies, but we're not willing to spend that much in a year defending against natural disaster. You might have noticed, we don't get invaded by foreign militaries every year. Spending on natural disasters is somewhat predictable, meaning you can set up an approximate budget for it. We've decided to stop doing this, because we're smart like that.

The result is predictable.

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Republicans, Disasters, and Their Idea of a 'Real America'

Steve Benen believes we won't be seeing a big disaster relief fight over the tornado disaster in Oklahoma. I hope he's right. The Republican Party's refusal to fund relief after Hurricanne Sandy was shameful at best, anti-American at worst. While Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn quickly decided to hold his constituents hostage to budget cuts, he doesn't have a lot of allies in that effort. By yesterday, he was already forced into damage control mode and the rest of the GOP was taking the opposite position.

Many prominent Republicans sounded downright Democratic yesterday. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), who opposed Sandy relief, said, "Finding some way to offset is not the priority. Meeting the known and immediate needs as quickly as possible is the priority." House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) added, "I really don't think disasters of this type should be offset. We have an obligation to help those people. We'll worry about our budgetary items back here, but the aid has to be there."

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said, "I think they should get every penny they need. I've been through this. We can do the political games later on, the important thing is to get them the aid as quickly as they need it and not to make a political issue out of it." Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) added, "[A]t the end of the day my objective here is to make sure the people here get the help they need in a timely fashion."

"Here's hoping we'll see a return to traditional American norms when it comes to post-disaster aid. For generations," Benen writes. "Congress didn't fight over offsets in the wake of a crisis, it simply moved to help American communities in their time of need. That changed after Republicans took control of the House in 2010, but given GOP reactions yesterday, we may be seeing the first signs that the party is rethinking the utility of its posture."

What we need to remember, however, was that Sandy happened right before the election. President Obama got a little bounce for his competent handling of the crisis and New Jersy Governor Chris Christie praised him for his leadership. It wasn't the deciding factor in the election, but it was a deciding factor, with 41% of respondents in a one exit poll saying it was either the "most important factor" in casting their vote or just an "important factor."

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The Disaster Movie

Yesterday, I compared the election of Barack Obama to a movie, saying that the inauguration -- after such a long election campaign -- seems like the time the credits would roll. But, of course, that long campaign was just the opening credits. This movie is just beginning.

The last movie to play in this theater has just wrapped up and the reviews are coming in. Not surprisingly, they aren't very good. As movies go, this Bush flick was a dog.

Editorials worldwide say Bush was a "failure," "worst president ever," and "a buffoon and a warmonger." His two terms were marked by a "singular lack of curiosity in international matters," "a 'friend-or-foe' mentality," and a "web of manipulation has cost America $900 billion and the lives of 4,000 soldiers -- along with at least 500,000 Iraqis."

This movie really, really blew.





President Bush leaves the White House the least respected of any president that we know of. A CBS News/NY Times poll finds that his final approval rating is 22%, with 73% disapproving. "Mr. Bush's final approval rating is the lowest final rating for an outgoing president since Gallup began asking about presidential approval more than 70 years ago," we're told.

Contrasted with Bush's numbers are Barack Obama's. Today, 79% are optimistic about Obama. A stunning 83% approve of his transition. None of this should come as a surprise; just turn on your TV. The flag and banner waving in Washington looks like the celebrations after a successful revolution. It reminds me of the Berlin Wall coming down.

Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com compares these numbers with other inaugural numbers:

The two highest initial, post-inauguration approval ratings as measured by Gallup belong to presidents who took over for others whose terms ended prematurely. About 86 percent of Americans approved of Harry Truman when he took over for FDR. And 77 percent approved Lyndon Johnson when he took over for JFK. The highest initial approval rating for a newly elected president, on the other hand, appears to belong to Kennedy, whom Gallup pegged at 72 percent approval shortly after his inauguration in 1961.

No one's died here, so the safe bet is that Barack Obama is the new John F. Kennedy in terms of popularity. It's a comparison that's been made often enough. But Bush himself holds the record for highest approval rating a 90% rating in a show of solidarity after 9/11. In the wake of disaster, everyone was ready for leadership. In Bush's case, we didn't get it.

My take on these numbers is that George W. Bush is the disaster Barack Obama is benefitting from. Something terrible has happened to our nation and we look to Obama to lead us in picking up the pieces. When you're going down in quicksand, you tend to have a good opinion of the guy with the rope.

As a result, I'm less concerned with Bush's attempt to rewrite history in his favor than I have been. Columnist Leonard Pitts jr. writes, "It occurs to me that, as patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, so history is the last refuge of the failed president." Try as he might, history will remember Bush exactly as he is -- a trainwreck of a presidency. Attempts at historical revisionism are doomed to fail.

It hasn't happened yet as I write, but the odds are that as you read this, a new president will have been sworn in. Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States of America. To 43, we'll have said a less than fond farewell. The worst president ever ends his movie not by riding off into the sunset, but by slinking off into the shadows, where he'll spend the rest of his life in a bootless effort to convince everyone that his movie wasn't as bad as all the reviewers said it was.

Yeah, good luck with that.

-Wisco

The Exit Interview

Some have called it the "exit interview." President Bush sat down with ABC News' Charles Gibson for an interview, to be broadcast during the nightly news. A few moments are getting all the coverage and they probably should. Bush continues to live in a world all his own, completely isolated from the facts and reality. Still, there are cracks in the bubble and reality seeps in in small quantities. Asked by Gibson, "Was the election in any way a repudiation of the Bush administration?" Bush answered:

I think it was a repudiation of Republicans. And I'm sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me. I think most people voted for Barack Obama because they decided they wanted him to be in their living room for the next four years explaining policy. In other words, they made a conscious choice to put him in as President.

I like that last sentence. That ought to kill all that speculation that we elected Barack Obama by accident. We made a conscious choice. Good to know. You ever notice how Bush will say something obvious, then say "in other words" and say something just as obvious? Sometimes the "other words" aren't even other words, just the same words in a different order and in a different tense. It's like he's thinking he's got to say more, so he pads his word count. In other words, he's padding his word count because he thinks he needs to use more words.





Other answers were frustratingly insane. Gibson asked him about "do-overs" and got this for an answer:

I don't know -- the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that's not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.

He doesn't wish he hadn't invaded Iraq, he doesn't wish he hadn't killed all those people as needlessly and uselessly as he has, he wishes the later evidence supported invading Iraq. This is a man who confuses the order in the term "cause and effect." The BS intelligence caused us to invade Iraq, making the invasion a mistake. I'm so ready to get some guy who understands logic in the White House, mostly because I'm so tired of this fool. I guess he's right, some people voted for Barack Obama because of him. Some people would've voted for a cinderblock instead of a Republican because of him. I can personally vouch for that.

But it was the first questions asked in the interview that are being overlooked. Mostly because of the demented and/or confused and/or stupid statements I've related above. Not covering those would've been amazingly bad journalism and incredibly incompetent punditry. Sometimes, the low hanging fruit is as important as it is easily plucked.

Still, with yesterday's news that we've been in a recession for nearly a year, you'd think that the economic questions would get a little more attention. We've been in the Bush recession (the second Bush recession, by the way) for a year and no one seems to be all that concerned about Bush's views on the economy?

CHARLIE GIBSON: Mr. President, let's start with the economy because it's what's on everybody's mind. Your successor will inherit not just a troubled economy, but an economy in crisis. Did you miss any signals that this would --

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: You know, we anticipated some issues revolving around Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and early in my administration called for a regulator, on the knowledge that an implied government guarantee could cause, and eventually did cause, the agency to become excessive in its lending practices, which eventually was a part of the financial meltdown.

And I can remember sitting in the Roosevelt Room with Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke and others, and they said to me that if we don't act boldly, Mr. President, we could be in a depression greater than the Great Depression.

See, George is peddling some BS here and Charlie Gibson -- as he can be counted on doing -- didn't call him on it. Yes, Bush called for a regulator, but the type of regulation he wanted wasn't wouldn't have done anything to save to two -- which, in any case, weren't the cause of the meltdown anyway. While the right has been busy blaming the collapse of the housing bubble on the poor taking out bad loans, the Bush administration had previously been encouraging just that. In fact, they required it:

White House Office of Management and Budget, 2006:

Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) were chartered to help low- and moderate-income families secure mortgages. HUD recently published a rule that requires Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase their purchases of mortgages for low- and moderate-income households and underserved communities. These new goals will push the GSEs to genuinely lead the market in creating homeownership opportunities for less advantaged Americans.

In addition to increasing the annual housing goals through 2008..., HUD’s rule establishes new home purchase sub-goals in each of the three goal areas. This is intended to focus the GSE’s efforts on purchases of homes rather than refinancings. HUD projects that over the next four years, the GSEs will purchase an additional 400,000 home loans that meet these new and more aggressive goals as a result of the new rule.

You might remember Bush talking about "the ownership society." This is it.

"Freddie Mac will launch 25 initiatives to eliminate homeownership barriers," Bush said in 2002. "Under one of these, consumers with poor credit will be able to get a mortgage with an interest rate that automatically goes down after a period of consistent payments." The Bush administration was working to get people with bad credit into the lending market. The assumption -- and make of that what you will -- was that people with bad credit were mostly poor and minority.

Who would bringing these people into the market benefit the most? In the short term, the credit industry. In the long term, no one. But corporations think in terms of quarterly profits -- there is no long term thinking. Loan originators and mortgage brokers would make money selling loans to institutions. Republican ideology would (theoretically) benefit as well.

"Well before the ownership society had a neat label, its creation was central to the success of the right-wing economic revolution around the world," wrote Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism in January. "The idea was simple: if working-class people owned a small piece of the market -- a home mortgage, a stock portfolio, a private pension -- they would cease to identify as workers and start to see themselves as owners, with the same interests as their bosses. That meant they could vote for politicians promising to improve stock performance rather than job conditions. Class consciousness would be a relic." Call it Pax Republicana. If everyone belonged to the investor class, everyone would be a Republican.

I'm always amazed at how Republican political theory often looks like the Marxist view of the future; this happens, then that happens, then history stops and everything stays perfect forever. Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority" comes to mind. If they can just get things just exactly right, then welcome to Utopia. Unfortunately, the dreamers never get it exactly right.

"The mass eviction from the ownership society has profound political implications. According to a September Pew Research poll, 48 percent of Americans say they live in a society carved into haves and have-nots -- nearly twice the number of 1988," Klein wrote. "Only 45 percent see themselves as part of the haves. In other words, we are seeing a return of the very class consciousness that the ownership society was supposed to erase. The free-market ideologues have lost an extremely potent psychological tool -- and progressives have gained one..."

At the end of his second term, Bush is unquestionably a failure. A Midas in reverse, everything he's touched turned to crap. His ideology has failed on nearly every point and his party is a smoking ruin. In Bush's exit interview, we see a man who still doesn't get it and still wants to place blame everywhere but where it belongs.

Good riddance.

-Wisco

Remember Iraqi Refugees

Today, the President and the President-Elect will meet at the White House to discuss the bloodless change of government that is the genius of democracy. Viva la Revolución Pacífica! The economy is said to be the primary focus, but you imagine the discussion will be pretty broad in its range. Barack Obama has been getting daily intelligence briefings, so we can assume he's up to speed on world events and the status of different "situations" around the globe. He's probably not going to be too interested in advice, although you assume he'll take it graciously. Normally, free advice is worth only what you paid for it, but from a failed presidency, it's worth even less than that. Obama just wants to know if you have to dial 9 to get an outside line. This is about running the physical machinery of the White House and a smooth transition from failure to promise.

There are many problems that President Obama will have to address and many of those are problems that President Bush let fester. In fact, many of these crises were caused by Bush, who's now busy pretending they don't exist. A big reason for the failures of the Bush administration is their addiction to BS; they seem to have a belief that there is no problem that isn't a PR problem. It doesn't matter whether something's going well, what's important is the perception that it's going well. If everyone thinks there isn't a problem, then there isn't a problem. Crisis management, for this crew, consists almost solely of press conferences. There is no problem that can't be talked to death.

And that's the problem with Iraq. While Bush singlemindedly pursues what he calls "victory," he ignores the problems he's caused with his boneheaded invasion of that country. Many will tell you that things are better there than they have been, but few will tell you its better now than it's ever been. Iraq is still a nation defined by instability, violence, and want. The current President wants you to think otherwise, because that's how he solves problems. The President-Elect will have to do better. Contrary to what George W. Bush seems to believe, you can't deny reality forever.

"Many Iraqis tell me that America broke this country and it is still shattered. When they look at their lives they see the lack of electricity, the corruption, the lack of clean water and much more," writes McClatchy Baghdad Bureau Chief Leila Fadel. "Security has improved but everything here is tenuous and violence, which has dropped but not disappeared, may come back."



Still, we're supposed to believe constantly repeated claim that "the surge worked." Of course, it hasn't, but that doesn't matter. Repeat it often enough and everyone either just assumes it's true or gets tired of banging their head against the wall. But let's assume for a moment that it did -- is this good enough? Of course it's not. This is a state of existence that we wouldn't stand for in the US. I can guarantee that if, say, Indianapolis didn't have reliable electricity or clean water, with sporadic outbreaks of street fighting and frequent bombings, while the local government operated on bribery and corruption, we wouldn't just want it fixed, we'd want people to go to prison for it. Better -- even if you really believe it -- is still unacceptable.

People can't live like this, so they leave. Ethnic cleansing has been so successful in Iraq that entire neighborhoods are dark and empty, ghost towns abandoned by those who've managed to survive. Those people become refugees.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees:

Iraqi refugees throughout the region have become increasingly desperate. Despite a decline in violence in the second half of 2007, only a small number have gone home, often because their resources are exhausted. Of those who returned to Iraq, many found their property occupied and suffered secondary displacement.

UNHCR estimates more than 4.7 million Iraqis have left their homes, many in dire need of humanitarian care. Of these, more than 2.7 million Iraqis are displaced internally, while more than 2 million have fled to neighbouring states, particularly Syria and Jordan. Many were displaced prior to 2003, but the largest number has fled since. In 2006, Iraqis became the leading nationality seeking asylum in Europe.

Worse, as these refugees return to this "better" Iraq, they're chased off again or killed. Not even a month ago, McClatchy reported that returning families were being attacked, many killed. "Some have been threatened," the report read. "Others have found explosives tied to their front doors. Some have had their homes blown up."

This refugee crisis spreads beyond Iraq's borders, further destabilizing the entire region. "Many uprooted Iraqis fleeing to surrounding countries do not initially seek UNHCR help, but rely instead on a social net of friends and relatives which UNHCR worries is rapidly wearing thin, bringing rising social problems among the exiles and occasional friction with host communities," say the UN. As this problem grows -- almost completely ignored by the nation that caused it -- it causes other problems in other nations. Where the neocons argued that removing Saddam Hussein from power would spread democracy throughout the region, it's helped to spread instability instead.

It's looking like we're out of Iraq by 2011, if not sooner. Bush may not like that, but he's nearly irrelevant. Iraq doesn't want to deal with him anymore and seems to be engaged in delaying tactics until they get a chance to sit down with an Obama administration.

When that happens, Iraq's refugees shouldn't be overlooked. Contrary to what Bush seems to think, widespread ignorance of the problem isn't a solution to it.

-Wisco

McCain's Folly

It's a lovely late autumn morning. The birds are singing, the air is wonderfully cool and seems clean as you breathe it in, the coffee gurgles in the coffee maker, Washington Mutual has gone under -- the largest bank failure in history -- and guys in suits are really freaking out on cable news. The financial wonks are climbing the freakin' walls -- "Where's the bailout?" they ask. "Where's the bailout?" And somewhere in Washington, John McCain quietly craps his pants.

By pretending to be the president and to take the reigns of the economy, McCain set himself up to fail. He doesn't serve on the Senate Banking Committee, so he can't actually help draft an agreement, all he can really do is vote or not for the final bill. He has no real input on a draft. Not only did McCain pretend he was going to do something super-important to fix the economy, but he pretended he could.

I don't know which is worse for John McCain, the truth or the perception. The perception is that House Republicans threw out an all but closed deal in order to help McCain, who managed to show up in Washington after the deal was announced. The truth is that House Republicans, swamped with anti-bailout letters and calls and emails, threw the deal out to help themselves. With the exception of those who've announced their retirements, every single GOP House member is up for re-election in about a month. So they did what Republicans do in a crisis; they panicked.





The House GOP offered their own plan -- two, actually, including one that TIME's Justin Fox calls "a joke."

[The plan from] the House Republican Study Committee, seems to be a joke. It calls for a two-year suspension of the capital gains tax to "encourag[e] corporations to sell unwanted assets." But the toxic mortgage securities clogging up bank balance sheets are worth less now than when they were acquired. Meaning that no capital gains tax would be owed on them anyway. If you repealed the tax, banks would have even less incentive to sell them because they wouldn't be able use the losses to offset capital gains elsewhere. Seriously, where do these people come up with this stuff?

Typical GOP. Use the crisis to push for some kind of tax cut. They seem to be especially attracted to those cuts that don't actually do anything constructive. Another plan, from Republican chief deputy whip, is called "more reasonable-sounding if still pretty vague." That's the advantage of vague. That one calls for the feds to insure more mortgages instead of buying them. House Republicans, no doubt seeing the word "socialist" applied to them more often in a week than they have in their entire lives, seem to believe that nationalizing loss a different way isn't really nationalizing loss.

All of which leaves John McCain pretty much screwed. He thought it would be a good idea, a real masterstroke of political genius, to grab onto this cinderblock of a market and swan dive into the pool. Instead, he finds himself royally screwed. McCain, a man who once said "Economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," seemed to believe that there was the possibility of a solution to this that everyone would like. There's not. The average American doesn't want the bailout at all. The investor class who funds his campaign wants it very, very badly. If there is no bailout, he's screwed. If McCain is credited for a bailout, he's screwed. It doesn't matter whether or not it works. And, although some economists say a bailout isn't necessary, being the man who bravely did nothing doesn't look a lot like leadership.

Hovering over all of this is tonight's debate -- which may or may not happen. Some think that skipping this debate was McCain's plan all along, but the subject was foreign policy and national security. In that debate, McCain did have the most to lose, but few believed he'd actually blow it on those subjects. This should be the debate McCain doesn't want to miss -- the one where he has some idea what the hell he's talking about.

On the subject of the debate, McCain sounds optimistic. "I believe that it's very possible that we can get an agreement in time for me to fly to Mississippi," McCain said. "I understand how important this debate is and I'm very hopeful. But I also have to put the country first."

"Country first" is looking more and more like a slogan. SurveyUSA has been polling the subject of the debate since McCain's big ride to the economy's rescue and public opinion is not trending pro-McCain. Originally, 50% thought the debate should go on. Yesterday, it had risen to 75%. 50% now say they have "no confidence" in McCain on the issue of the economy.

This is what happens when you pretend to be able to do something you can't. John McCain, whose stride had been broken by stumbles at the beginning of all of this, is simply trying to build some econ cred. But, being an economic dope, he's managed only to dig himself in deeper with his bumbling cluelessness.

I wish I could think of more to add here. This was a gross miscalculation on McCain's part, a fumble of epic proportions -- you'd think there would be more to say about it. But I guess the most spectacular explosions are easy to describe -- "It went BOOM!" I could add a bunch of useless words to match the grandeur of McCain's mistake, but all I'd really be doing would be pouring gravy over "he blew it."

-Wisco

BREAKING AS I PUBLISH: McCain backpedals on his original position that he wouldn't leave Washington until a deal was reached. The debate is on.

To Fix the Media, Kill Phony Objectivity

I've been ripping on the media lately and not without good cause. We've seen what may have been the worst and most uninformative presidential debate of our lifetime. Well, worst and most uninformative to date, anyway. There may not be any lower limit to just how bad television news can make things. We've seen the media give John McCain the kid gloves treatment, meeting terrible campaign decisions and appearances with near-applause. We've seen the media acting as stenographers to power, repeating everything they're told without examining whether or not any of it is true.

Still, the fourth estate is not dead, merely sick. Perhaps dying. But it's not done yet. Print journalism, at least, is still kicking. And sometimes producing great work. We see the difference in coverage of Iraq. Where TV media tends to show us Iraq as a big map, print journalists show us that people live and work within the borders. When watching cable news or the networks, it's often as if you're watching from the moon. Everything you see is shown as a matter of nations, not people. And, since nations are at their most basic entirely conceptual, coverage of Iraq becomes an academic exercise. It's not a war, it's a game, and Iraq is that weird shaped piece in the middle east. Take Iraq and the grand plan to capture Yakutsk and Kamchatka moves apace.

McClatchy Baghdad Correspondent Leila Fadel reprints part of a letter from a mother that reminds us why a more focused and earthly approach to the news is still important. In response to an article and accompanying video about US troops in Sadr City, she wrote:

Lt Adam Bowen is my son. You were with him and his platoon a few days ago in Sadr City. When I read your article, which so accurately depicted him, I could hear him talking and hear his tone of voice in each quote. But then I saw the video. I watched it, with lots of trepidation, hoping for a just quick glimpse of him. When the camera panned around the room, and I found myself face to face with him, it was such an incredible moment. I’ve watched it over and over and have paused it repeatedly just to be able to look at him, to see if he’s okay. (He looks well—I hope you found him so.) I play it again and again, hearing him in the background on the radio.

"Something Lt. Bowen said to me has stuck with me," Fadel writes. "'Nobody cares about what we're doing here, nobody but our families.' I hope that's not true."

At the risk of conjuring memories of Soylent Green, I'd remind TV media outlets that the news is people. Maps are just some crap we made up and arbitrarily imposed on the world.

Another print journalist who demonstrates this is columnist Dana Milbank in a piece for the Washington Post. Titled "What the Family Would Let You See, the Pentagon Obstructs," it's about the micromanagement of media coverage of the funeral of Lt. Col. Billy Hall.

The family of 38-year-old Hall, who leaves behind two young daughters and two stepsons, gave their permission for the media to cover his Arlington burial -- a decision many grieving families make so that the nation will learn about their loved ones' sacrifice. But the military had other ideas, and they arranged the Marine's burial yesterday so that no sound, and few images, would make it into the public domain.

Milbank tells us that the roadblocks put up to the media, who were invited by the family to cover the service, "fits neatly with an effort by the administration to sanitize the war in Iraq."

He reports what he can and tells us that there's a bigger story here, one the military goes to extremes to keep out of the news. These fallen have families and Hall was no exception; he leaves behind two daughters, 6-year-old Gladys and 3-year-old Tatianna. "In the front row of mourners, one young girl trudged along, clinging to a grown-up's hand; another child found a ride on an adult's shoulders," Milbank writes. "It was a moving scene -- and one the Pentagon shouldn't try to hide from the American public."

But not even TV news is hopeless. There are times when everything is so big and so overwhelming that reality seeps into the detachment. Where TV journalists tend to be robotic, the emotional context of the story can't be denied and it's at this point -- sadly, when all their TV news training fails -- that we see excellence.

Both of my examples of this come from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was so huge and so overwhelming and so tragic that it was difficult for journalists to maintain their objectivity and became, if only for a moment, human.

This is video of an interview of Katrina survivor Hardy Jackson by Jennifer Mayerle, a reporter for WKRG, Mobile, Alabama. It was shot in Biloxi, Mississippi:



This was the best video I could find and it's a little quiet (at least, on my machine), so I went looking for a transcript. I totally lucked out and found one, as well as great commentary on it by G.E. "Skip" Lawrence of the Phoenixville News, a small paper in the Philadelphia area.

[Mayerle] tries out a conclusion, that "Hurricane Katrina is proving to be a powerful, destructive, and maybe deadly storm here along the Gulf coast. We know that people will remember this storm for years to come."

As she does, a man who had started to pass her doubles back, two small boys in tow. "I lost my wife", says Hardy Jackson, 434 Heidenheim Avenue. She doesn't hear him.

Mayerle: How are you doing, sir?

Jackson: I'm not doing good.

Mayerle: What happened?

Jackson: The house just split in half.

Mayerle: Your house split in half?

Jackson: [inaudible] We got up in the roof, all the way to the roof. And water came in high, just opened it up, divided it.

Mayerle: Who was at your house with you?

Jackson: My wife.

Mayerle: And where is she now?

Jackson: [inaudible] She's gone.

Mayerle: You can't find your wife?

Jackson: No, she told me, I tried, I hold her hand as tight as I could. And she told me, 'You can't hold on.' She said, 'Take care of the kids, and the grandkids.'

Mayerle: What's your wife's name, in case we can get this out there?

Jackson: Tonette Jackson.

Mayerle: Okay. And what is your name?

Jackson: Hardy Jackson.

Mayerle: Where are you guys going?

Jackson: We got nowhere to, I don't know where I'm going. I'm, I'm lost. That's all I had. That's all I had. Don't know what we'll do.

Mayerle: [to the camera] Katrina is proving to be a dead...

Jackson: There's six, a few more bodies over there where I stayed at. Laying, laying right there in the mud.

Mayerle: You guys, you take care of your boys, okay? [to the camera] Katrina is proving to be a deadly storm. Now reporting in Biloxi, Jennifer Mayerle, News 5.

"In print, this scans as if Mayerle is doing nothing more than being a good reporter, structuring the occasion with reporter's questions, asked with reporters' objectivity," Lawrence wrote. "But at 'I'm lost' - which was, of course, not an answer to her question of geography - she starts to cry. Her questions now come with a tremble. Her practiced line 'Katrina is proving to be..'" becomes her salvation. She drops the 'maybe' from 'maybe a deadly storm', and hangs on to the rest as tightly as she would have done to a piece of flotsam on what used to be Heidenheim Avenue."

It turns out that the pretty blonde news-robot isn't a robot at all. At the moment her objectivity fails her, we fall from our detached orbit and find ourselves on that ruined street, worried about this man and his boys who have suddenly become inarguably real to us. Hardy Jackson became a minor celebrity because of this, the footage was widely circulated, and people around the world wanted to help him specifically and other survivors generally. One year later, Jackson was living in a donated home. TV journalism made a difference, but only because objectivity was lost and humanity shown.

It may be that the most revealing video footage from Katrina (Windows and Quicktime, courtesy of Crooks and Liars) came from the most unlikely source -- FOX News. On the BS spin show, Hannity & Colmes, Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera pretty much lose it. Sent to the center of the devastation, the Superdome, these guys find themselves in a situation that's impossible to spin. At one point, Rivera tries to explain just how awful it all is, finally going with "What the hell?" He just doesn't have the words.

Sean Hannity is clearly unprepared for this sort of truth-telling. He was looking for FOX-style "the rest of the media says this is bad because they hate Bush" spin and he gets truth jammed down his throat. At one point, he tells Smith "I wanna get some perspective here..." (which is Hannity-speak for "let me spin this") and Smith bites his head off.

"This is perspective!" Smith says. "This is all the perspective you need!" Both reporters are visibly upset and genuinely angered and grief-stricken and appalled by what they're seeing all around them.

"The government said, 'You go here and you'll get help' or 'You go into that Superdome and you'll get help.' But they didn't get help. They got locked in there and they watched people being killed around them. And they watched people starving and they watched elderly people not get any medicine," Smith reported. "And now they know it's happening. Because we've been telling them, repeatedly. Over and over, every day..."

Shepard Smith changed from Leni Riefenstahl to a mix of Edward R. Murrow and Tom Jode that night. I wish I could say he never changed back. Given the enormity of what he was seeing, the tremendous mismanagement that was turning a disaster into a catastrophe, and seeing from the ground what needed to be done and what wasn't happening, he stopped being a robot too. And once again, we fell out of that detached TV news orbit and found ourselves face to face with unimaginable tragedy.

In terms of journalism, the sad thing is that these people needed to become emotionally defeated to get past all the maps and graphs and polls and pundits to actually report the damned news honestly. But it proves that TV news isn't hopeless, it can be done right. The problem is that there aren't many out there who are doing it.

The news is people -- even TV news.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; media; FOX News; Katrina; disaster; Believe it or not, TV journalism can be done right -- it's just that almost no one does it

Deal or Steal?

I've already dealt with this briefly at my Griper News blog. I post a few of the screwy news stories I come across during the day as The Stuff I Didn't Get To or, more informally, "The Roundup." In this case, the story vindicated an earlier post I'd written titled War Could Cost Over $2 Trillion -- Wouldn't it Have Been Cheaper Just to Buy Iraq?

This isn't really a plug to go read stuff I've already written. It's a case of not hiding my light under a bushel. It turns out that, not only would it have been less expensive to just buy Iraq, but that Saddam was willing to sell it -- cheap. Extremly cheap.

I so called it.

Reuters:

Saddam Hussein was prepared to take $1 billion and go into exile before the Iraq war, according to a transcript of talks between U.S. President George W. Bush and an ally, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday.

During a meeting at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on February 22, 2003, Bush told former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar that Saddam could also be assassinated, according to the transcript published in El Pais in Spanish.

In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe declined to comment on the report.

Iraq has a land area of 168,754 sq. miles, making Saddam's offer roughly equal to $5, 917.15 per sq. mile for Iraq's oil rich land. Of course, as we all can surmise, Bush -- shrewd businessman that he is -- turned him down. It's this sort of decision making that bankrupted Arbusto Energy and led Bush to trade homerun machine Sammy Sosa to the White Sox.

In contrast, let's look at where we are now.

Associated Press:

President Bush and Congress are headed toward another showdown on war spending, this time sparring over nearly $190 billion the Pentagon says is needed to keep combat in Iraq afloat for another year.

[...]

If approved, Congress would have appropriated more than $760 billion for the two wars, having already approved of $450 billion for Iraq and $127 billion for Afghanistan.

Instead of buying off a dictator -- as he has with Pervez Musharraf and Muammar Qaddafi -- President Brilliant decided the best thing to do would be to invade. Like most of the decisions Bush has made thoughout his life, this proved to be a poor one. And an expensive one, in more ways than one.

Of course, we can always just borrow more money. That's been working out great. As Dick Cheney says, "Reagan proved deficits don't matter." There's plenty of money to shovel down a hole in the desert. It's not like there hasn't been a return on the investment -- not for you, for Team Bush. Wartime presidents tend to be re-elected. Besides, if we'd just bought Iraq, flying onto the USS Abraham Lincoln in a jet, getting plenty of photos in a flight suit, and declaring "Mission accomplished" would've never happened. Bush's G.I. Joe moment was worth every penny -- to him, anyway.

In fact, Bush was so intent on getting his hero moment that nothing would keep him from war. According to El Pais, Bush was going to war with Iraq no matter what happened (translation by Watching America):

On the 16th of March 2003, even as Bush maintained his public demands for Saddam to 'disarm or it's war,' Bush, Blair and [then spanish President] Aznar decided to replace the U.N. Security Council and usurp its functions to declare war on their own accord.

Second UN resolution or no, we were going in. Cooler heads couldn't be allowed to prevail. The US, UK, and Spain would later form the backbone of the "Coalition of the Willing." Bush wanted war so badly that the White House used 27 different excuses to invade prior to the war. When one reason was shot down, they'd cook up another. It seems that no effort was made to think up reasons not to invade. In the bad idea factory that is the Bush White House, critical thinking and considering both sides of an argument have no place. Bushies are (at least, in their own minds) flawless intellects and their first impulse is always correct. History disagrees.

In human -- as well as monetary -- costs, the occupation of Iraq has been damned expensive. At least 74,000 iraqis have died (although most observers put that number over a million), the US military has lost 3,800 people, we've spent going on $760 billion, and the US reputation in the world has taken a massive hit.

But we saved $5, 917.15 per sq. mile. Doesn't look like the best decision in retrospect, does it? Just another example of how crime doesn't pay.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; history; UK; Spain; Saddam Hussein offered to sell Iraq to us, but Bush decided to steal it

No Money for Bridges, but Millions for Ballparks

It was typical of George W. Bush -- opportunistic, thoughtless, divisive, and highly politicized. In comments about the bridge collapse in Minnesota, Bush was quick to blame Democrats for the tragedy and use the opportunity to call for tax cuts. Seriously.

If you don't know that this happened, you can thank the media, who have covered only half the story. Here's how the New York Times reported it:

President Bush, in a news conference today, expressed condolences for the victims and said "the federal government must respond and respond robustly to help the people there not only recover, but to make sure that lifeline of activity, that bridge, gets rebuilt as quickly as possible." The White House later announced that Mr. Bush would travel to Minneapolis on Saturday.

If you're guessing that he said a lot more than that, you're right. But you have to go to the White House website to find it. We get all the stuff you'd expect; the assurances that the federal government will 'respond robustly' and the calls for prayer that cover the White House website like wallpaper. Then comes this:

This doesn't have to be this way. The Democrats won last year's election fair and square, and now they control the calendar for bringing up bills in Congress. They need to pass each of these spending bills individually, on time, and in a fiscally responsible way.

The budget I've sent to Congress fully funds America's priorities. It increases discretionary spending by 6.9 percent. My Cabinet Secretaries assure me that this is adequate to meet the needs of our nation.

Unfortunately, Democratic leaders in Congress want to spend far more. Their budget calls for nearly $22 billion more in discretionary spending next year alone. These leaders have tried to downplay that figure. Yesterday one called this increase -- and I quote -- "a very small difference" from what I proposed. Only in Washington can $22 billion be called a very small difference. And that difference will keep getting bigger. Over the next five years it will total nearly $205 billion in additional discretionary spending. That $205 billion averages out to about $112 million per day, $4.7 million per hour, $78,000 per minute.

In fact, in a press release of ten paragraphs (including the closing, "Thank you for your time"), only three are about the damned bridge -- the rest is Bush scolding dems for wanting to 'raise taxes.' If you were relying solely on the mainstream media, you'd never know this.

Remember, at this point there are still people in the water and Bush is taking the time to explain why cutting taxes is so important. Geez, give it a break for just five seconds, OK? The guy learned absolutely nothing from Katrina. I'm surprised he didn't find some way to use the collapse as a way to demonstrate why we have to stay in Iraq forever or to launch a Global War on Gravity.

The collapse should be a wake up call, but the president's busy hitting the snooze button. Nick Coleman writes in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "There isn't any bigger metaphor for a society in trouble than a bridge falling, its concrete lanes pointing brokenly at the sky, its crumpled cars pointing down at the deep waters where people disappeared." The country has deep infrastructure problems, stuff is blowing up, sinking into sink holes, and falling down around our ears.

"We have all over the country crumbling infrastructure -- highways, bridges, dams -- and we really need to take a hard look at this," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in response to the bridge failure.

Way back in 2005, MSNBC reported:

Crowded schools, traffic-choked roads and transit cutbacks are eroding the quality of American life, according to an analysis by civil engineers that gave the nation's infrastructure an overall grade of D.

A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers released Wednesday assessed the four-year trend in the condition of 12 categories of infrastructure.

And that trend is downward. "The overall grade slipped from the D+ given in 2001 and 2003," the report tells us. Breaking down our infrastructure by category, "The highest grade? A C+ for solid waste. The lowest? D- for drinking water, navigable waterways and wastewater." An F means pretty much nonexistent.

Here's a fun fact: tax cuts are not the way to fix our crumbling infrastructure. In fact, misplaced priorities are a big part of what got us into this mess in the first place. In response to the bridge collapse, the Minnesota Twins postponed its groundbreaking for a new stadium -- being built with public dollars. According to Minnesota Public Radio, "...Twins owner Carl Pohlad will pay $130 million towards the stadium. But the plan also requires a Hennepin County sales tax of .15 percent. The tax finances the remaining three quarters of the ballpark's $522 million cost."

You can raise hundreds of millions to pay for ballparks, but bridges are a luxury. To go back to Nick Coleman's piece, "For half a dozen years, the motto of state government and particularly that of Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been No New Taxes. It's been popular with a lot of voters and it has mostly prevailed. So much so that Pawlenty vetoed a 5-cent gas tax increase - the first in 20 years - last spring and millions were lost that might have gone to road repair. And yes, it would have fallen even if the gas tax had gone through, because we are years behind a dangerous curve when it comes to the replacement of infrastructure that everyone but wingnuts in coonskin caps agree is one of the basic duties of government."

Maybe it's that infrastructure is so unsexy. It's about bolts and rust and snarled traffic as backhoes dig around in the street. It's about bridges and roads and sewers. Ballparks are fun, powerlines are dull.

But the fact is that these dull things are the things our entire society relies on. And, if we keep up with this idiotic idea that tax cuts are always good, we're going to watch it all crumble around us. You've got to pay for this stuff and, at both the states and federal levels, we're not. You can't run a nation the size of the US on the cheap. It's like everything else in the world, you get what you pay for. And if you pay jack, you get jack.

For Bush to use this as an opportunity to browbeat Democrats over tax cuts is as stupid as it is offensive. If you love America, then you pay for America.

And tax cuts don't pay for anything.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; taxes; infrastructure; After the Minnesota bridge disaster, Bush calls for tax cuts

Bush Administration Turned Away Foreign Aid After Katrina

It was a defining moment in George W. Bush's presidency. Hurricane Katrina exposed him for what he really is -- an incompetent boob, more concerned with spin than with real world events. As the flood waters rose and people drowned, Bush told us that Brownie was doing a heckuva job and everything was going fan-freakin'-tastic. It quickly became apparent that this wasn't the case.

It took days to respond to a storm we knew was coming nearly a week in advance. News networks seemed to have no problem getting to the affected areas right away, but the National Guard seemed to find getting there impossible -- incredibly, equipment that would've helped in flooding had been sent to the desert in Iraq.

New York Times, via AMERICAblog:

Pentagon officials asserted that deployment of thousands of National Guard members from the gulf states to Iraq and Afghanistan had not affected relief efforts. But on Tuesday the two hardest-hit states, Louisiana and Mississippi, which each have more than 3,000 National Guard troops in Iraq, requested military specialists and equipment from other states, ranging from military police and engineers to helicopters and five-ton, high-wheeled trucks that can traverse the flood waters.

Hospitals were cut off, police were non-existent, mass panic took hold, and many people wondered how an administration that talked a good game about being ready for a major terrorist attack could be so unprepared for an event with the same consequences of a such an attack. Exposed as a major league BSer, Bush's long slide in the polls began.

We thought we knew everything about the response to Katrina. The total lack of advanced planning, the slowness of FEMA to act, the inability of the Bush administration to take it's responsibilities seriously. But it turns out that things were worse. When other nations offered help, Bush turned them away.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethic in Washington (CREW) has come out with a report showing that the administration was so busy covering up their own incompetence that they turned away foreign aid, maybe because they thought it would look bad. Although my take -- which we'll get to an a moment -- is more sinister.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington:

...Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released the most comprehensive matrix available to date detailing all offers of assistance from around the world in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

CREW's matrix is based on 25,000 Department of State (DOS) documents it received as a result of a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act in December 2005 for records relating to the federal government’s handling and acceptance of international offers of aid after Hurricane Katrina.

The matrix includes all international offers, whether they were rejected or accepted and the reasons why, if available. The documents reveal a number of disturbing responses to offers from 145 countries and 12 international organizations from around the world.

The documents show that:

-A September 9 memo states that doctors of any kind are in the "forget about it" category.

-A September 6 memo indicated that no medical offers (personnel or drugs) were being accepted with the exception of forensices. It mentions licensure as an issue and that it would be beneficial to know if any of the offered medical teams had been US trained.

-A memo dated September 13 indicated that medicines and medical related offers are not to be accepted due to "sensitivities about state licensing."

None of these concerns are valid in an emergency situation. Remember the old disaster movie Airport? This is like telling Karen Black to get the hell out of the cockpit because she's not a licensed pilot. Citing similar bureaucratic BS, food, water pumps, and portable generators were also turned away.

How much of this was just bad decision-making in a crunch and how much of this was deliberate? We know that the Bush administration took FEMA and put it under Homeland Security -- basically demoting the agency. We also know that FEMA, having lost any independence it once had, was now subject to the Bush ideology of 'government sucks.' Since much of the relief effort -- shipping in medical supplies, food, generators, blankets, etc -- had been privatized, how much of this was just a way of eliminating competition in the free market paradise that was now the disaster relief business?

According to an In These Times piece in September 2005:

In June 2004, FEMA privatized its hurricane disaster plan for New Orleans, contracting the work to the Baton Rouge, La., firm Innovative Emergency Management (IEM) whose motto is "Managing Risk in a Complex World."

IEM announced the contract on its Web site on June 3, 2004, trumpeting that the company "will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)." But in the days after Katrina hit, the press release was removed from the company's online press release archives, as China Mieville noted on the blog Lenin's Tomb.

For this whole privatized relief experiment to work, companies would have to provide all relief. And, for an administration that seems to think that 'free' and 'evil' are synonyms, accepting relief supplies from private governments would only eliminate opportunities for private companies to bill these supplies to the government. In the screwed up, 'capitalism and markets are the answer to every damned problem' mindset of the Bush administration, accepting foreign aid would be immoral and akin to socialism.

According to the ITT article, Joe Allbaugh -- the first head of FEMA under Bush -- told Congress in 2004, "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program and a disincentive to effective state and local risk management."

We all know what 'entitlement program' means when a right winger says it -- a government handout. Never mind that FEMA has more in common with the fire department than the welfare office, disaster relief apparently creates welfare queens. And welfare is for corporations, not people.

What all of this shows is that no one in the Bush administration gives a good goddam about you. You don't have lobbyists and you don't give hundreds of thousands to candidates, so when the choice is between bailing out a corporation or bailing out your living room, the corporations get the bucket and you get the shaft. If you have to die because some private company can't get you fresh water, then die you will. You're not allowed to take water from Canada or Mexico. People in corporate boardrooms have marketing staffs to feed.

The response to Katrina is the conservative approach to government's responsibilities taken to its logical -- and ridiculous -- extreme. The Bush administration's vision of the government's role in the world can be summed up in a single sentence -- if a buck can be made, a buck must be made.

Anything else is socialism and would make Reagan's ghost cry.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; FEMA; foreign aid; Bush; Republican; conservative; Hurricane Katrina, a free market disaster

Plan B? What About a Plan A?

What do you do with an unpopular war that serves no real purpose? It doesn't seem like it's all that difficult a question -- you stop it.

Some don't see it that way. See, that's too simple and obvious. The question all the big fans of the war are asking is, you pull out -- then what? White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told FOX News recently:

To walk out of Iraq right now would plant a seed that ultimately would lead to destabilization there, hundreds of thousands of deaths, loss of our influence in the region, would create instability throughout the Middle East throughout East Asia, throughout Europe.

The problem with this scary scenario is that it's a damned good description of Iraq now. The newest argument in favor of the war is that people who want withdrawal don't have any plan to deal with the violence afterward.

The most obvious answer is that we don't have any plan to deal with the violence there now. If we pull out, will the sectarian civil war in Iraq turn into a sectarian civil war in Iraq or is that a really stupid and redundant question? "I am convinced based on everything I have read it won't be a hell of a lot worse than it is now," Rep. John Murtha told a reporter for the L.A. Times.

In fact, that quote comes from a Times story titled, 'Pullout proposal lacking a Plan B' -- the subheader reads, 'Those who want troops out of Iraq acknowledge that sectarian violence will likely follow.' The problem is that the premise assumes an entirely unrealistic situation -- that Iraq is manageable now, but difficult. That's not the case. Iraq is a failed state and neither we nor the iraqi government have any control over what happens there. Pro-war people get to talk about 'Plans B' when they come up with their own 'Plan A.'

The mistake has already been made. Asking what we'll do about the violence after we leave is like asking how we plan to unmix paint. Worse, it's a way for the pro-war nuts to slough off their own responsibility for this bloodbath and the initial mistakes that brought us to this point. They started this tire fire and now they fault us for having no way to put it out. All you can do with a tire fire is let it burn itself out.

Which brings us to this letter antiwar dems in the House sent to President Bush yesterday:

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing to inform you that we will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of all our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.

More than 3,600 of our brave soldiers have died in Iraq. More than 26,000 have been seriously wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have been killed or injured in the hostilities and more than 4 million have been displaced from their homes. Furthermore, this conflict has degenerated into a sectarian civil war and U.S. taxpayers have paid more than $500 billion, despite assurances that you and your key advisors gave our nation at the time you ordered the invasion in March, 2003 that this military intervention would cost far less and be paid from Iraqi oil revenues.

We agree with a clear and growing majority of the American people who are opposed to continued, open-ended U.S. military operations in Iraq, and believe it is unwise and unacceptable for you to continue to unilaterally impose these staggering costs and the soaring debt on Americans currently and for generations to come.

The letter is signed by way more people than I'm willing to list here -- 70 in all. Check it out to see where your congress critter stands. I can save some of you some time, though -- the only GOP member who signed was Ron Paul. Other names are predictable -- Conyers, Kucinich, Rangel, Waters among them. I was glad to see my Rep., Tammy Baldwin, listed and the woman I call my 'near Rep.', Gwen Moore from over in Milwaukee. When it comes to stuff like this, the only problem with living in Madison is that I seldom have anyone to yell at. It's a problem I can live with.

As long as we're talking about who does or doesn't have a plan, let's look at a poll taken by Military.com -- a news site for military members. According to them:

Nearly 60 percent of readers who participated in a recent Military.com poll said the United States should withdraw its troops from Iraq now or by the end of 2008. More than 40 percent of the respondents agreed the pullout should begin immediately because "we're wasting lives and resources there."

A similar number of participants, however, felt that U.S. troops should remain in Iraq, with 41 percent of respondents concluding that America should fight "until the insurgency is totally defeated."

I'm sorry, 'until the insurgency is totally defeated?' This brings two questions to mind -- what the hell does that even mean and what's your plan to get that done?

The fact is that the plan for Iraq was exactly what the Bush administration said it was. We go in, boot out Saddam, and everyone's so damned happy they throw us a big parade -- The Princess gives the Wookie a medal, the end, roll credits. That was it. That was what passed for serious military planning. They didn't have a plan when they went in and that's the problem now. They wrecked the place and now they get to criticize us for not being able to fix it? That takes balls.

The answer for Iraq is simple -- we screwed things up so badly there that we can't possibly fix it. We can stay there and be the third side of a three way civil war or we can get the hell out and make it a two way civil war.

Doesn't seem like much of a headscratcher to me.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; democrats; Tammy Baldwin; Gwen Moore; peace; congress; war; Withdrawal from Iraq is the only realistic plan

World Refugee Day

As holidays go, today isn't one of the fun ones. Today, June 20, is World Refugee Day. Around the world, people are displaced by genocide, famine, natural disaster, and war. Being a refugee is mainly a matter of bad luck on the part of person and poor planning on the part of the government. Hurricane Katrina showed us that anyone can become a refugee. But it's a problem that mostly haunts the poor.

This year wasn't an extremely good one for refugees. The United Nations tells us we're in a 'World Refugee Crisis,' with refugees up 14% from 2005 and no break in sight. They come from Darfur and Somalia and Afghanistan and Iraq and every refugee's story begins the same way -- something unimaginable happens, you grab the kids and whatever you can carry, and you run like hell. The only destination you have is 'away.' Often, you run from hell to a lesser hell -- hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of iraqis have found themselves in refugee camps in Iran.

In fact, the two crises driving this larger refugee crisis are ethnic cleansing in Sudan and the war in Iraq.

Reuters:

Iraq has emerged as the world's second most unstable country, behind Sudan, more than four years after President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, according to a survey released on Monday.

The 2007 Failed States Index, produced by Foreign Policy magazine and the Fund for Peace, said Iraq suffered a third straight year of deterioration in 2006 with diminished results across a range of social, economic, political and military indicators. Iraq ranked fourth last year.

Afghanistan, another war-torn country where U.S. and NATO forces are battling a Taliban insurgency nearly six years after a U.S.-led invasion, was in eighth place.

I've been calling Iraq a failed state for a long time. The government is an almost entirely diplomatic team, without any control whatsoever over what goes on in that country. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the war in Iraq alone has created 4.2 million displaced persons -- 2 million inside Iraq and the remainder in neighboring countries. These countries can't continue to take in refugees and are beginning to turn them away. In fact, theyre even being turned away inside Iraq. "Individual governorates inside Iraq are becoming overwhelmed by the needs of the displaced. At least 10 out of the 18 governates have closed their borders or are restricting access to new arrivals," says UNHCR spokesperson, Jennifer Pagonis. "UNHCR is receiving disturbing reports of regional authorities refusing to register new arrivals, including single women, and denying access to government services. Many displaced have been evicted from public buildings."

This leaves the internally displaced in shanty towns where the UNHCR says at least 47% -- nearly half -- have no access to official food distribution channels. Shortly after the war broke out, I remember seeing a news report on a displaced family. They were young, with a little toddler girl, and they were literally living under a rock out in the desert. That was the last time I remember seeing iraqi refugees on TV. I guess as global crises go, there's the telegenic and the untelegenic. I wonder if most people know that there are iraqi refugees at all.

But don't worry, Laura Bush is on it.

CNN's American Morning:

Q In fact, this is World Refugee Day at CNN, we've tried to highlight it -- 500 million people around the world, 400 million people around the world, having to flee their country for whatever reason. One that we're highlighting today also is the situation in Iraq -- people who were helping the Americans or even helping their own country, men and women, rebuild infrastructure, targeted. And they are also seeking refuge in other nations, as well as the United States.

MRS. BUSH: Sure, in Lebanon and Syria and Jordan, and then here. And I think Americans would be proud to know that we welcome to our country more refugees than all the rest of the nations combined. And obviously we're especially concerned about the Iraqi refugees, people who are there who are trying to build their government, trying to build a stable country, which is what our goal is, as well, who have left because of terror, really, because of the chance of violence and the fear of violence.

We welcome many of those refugees, both from Iraq and Afghanistan into the United States. We also spend about $80 million a year working with refugees, Iraqi refugees in the camps in Lebanon.

Yeah, they only have to make it across Africa -- including a trek across the Sahara -- then a brief swim in the Atlantic Ocean, and they're home free. I'm so proud... Allow me to refer back to an earlier post to give you an idea of what we're really doing for refugees:

...The [International] Herald Tribune tells us that the US State Department plans to spend $20 million on aiding refugees. Do the math; that's a little more than ten bucks per refugee for the internally displaced alone. That ought to go a long way.

We're big on creating refugees, but not so much on solving the problem. When I wrote that, there were 1.8 million internally displaced, now there's 2 million and spending hasn't increased. Not that it'd make much difference -- if we increased our spending in proportion to the growth of the population, we'd still be spending jack. Ten bucks per might last a day. I don't know where Laura Bush is getting the $80 million figure for Lebanon alone from, but I suspect it's from Karl Rove's butt.

A better idea of the concerns of the administration for iraqis struggling for their lives comes from the president himself.

60 Minutes:

Asked if he thinks he owes the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job, Bush says, "Well I don't, that we didn't do a better job or they didn't do a better job?"

"Well, that the United States did not do a better job in providing security after the invasion?" [interviewer Scott] Pelley clarifies.

"Not at all. I think I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude. That's the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that's significant enough in Iraq," Bush replies.

That kid living under a rock in the desert is just a griper if she complains. The administration believes she's living the sweet life. Kind of explains the response to Hurricane Katrina, doesn't it?

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; Afghanistan; Sudan; Darfur; genocide; disaster; Bush; UN; refugees; Can you really be said to 'celebrate' World Refugee Day?

Dems' Cave In to Bush Backfires

Presidential longshot Joe Biden on dems caving in to Bush on Iraq War funding:

PBS NewsHour:

We have 50 votes in the United States Senate. We have less of a majority in the House than at any time other than the last eight years.

Ladies and gentlemen, you're going to end this war when you elect a Democratic president. You need 67 votes to end this war. I love these guys who tell you they're going to stop the war.

Let me tell you straight up the truth: The truth of the matter is, the only one that's emboldened the enemy has been George Bush by his policies, not us funding the war. We're funding the safety of those troops there until we can get 67 votes.

This, of course, is not the truth. It's BS. Had Congress continued to send the President bills with timelines and restrictions, one of two things would've happened -- Bush would've signed one and accepted restrictions or Bush would veto them all and defund the war. There were no other possibilities. And 'funding the safety of those troops?' More BS. Not only was the supplimental paying for operations -- not paychecks, meals, and bullets -- but the vast majority of the funding doesn't go to the military at all. It goes to corporations and contractors.

Not surprisingly, the Democratic strategy of not doing what the hell they said they were going to do isn't working out so well. Dems take a real dip in the polls.

Thompson Financial:

Americans are increasingly disappointed with the general direction of US government policy, the war in Iraq and Congress' new Democratic majority, according to a survey out today.

Just 39 pct of those surveyed in the Washington Post-ABC News poll said they approved of Congress' work, down five points from April when the new Democratic majority had been in place for 100 days.

Support for the Congressional Democrats elected in November slid 10 points during the same period, the survey said, to 44 pct now.

The Democrats were so terrified of being labelled 'anti-troops' that they didn't even remember the public was on their side. By trying to avoid a PR disaster, they've created a PR disaster. Good work, guys. Now you have a smoking hole in both shoes.

And how's the big surge idea going? About as well as you'd expect.

ABC News, The Blotter:

Members of anti-American insurgent groups have infiltrated the ranks of Iraqi police. But even when American soldiers have reason to believe an Iraqi policeman secretly belongs to one of these groups, which drive the rising violence in Iraq, they cannot get him kicked off the force, a former U.S. military trainer told members of Congress last week.

What can you build when there's nothing to build on? Not much. What we wind up doing is training iraqis to be really good at fighting us. Brilliant.

There's no saving this at this point. The ship isn't sinking anymore, it's laying at the bottom -- gone. And pretending that Bush is going to come to his senses sometime in our lifetime isn't helpful -- the man's completely insane. But that's exactly what dems are doing.

They could've stopped this -- veto or no veto. There's no way that the war continues without them. They've signed on to this war now. It's as much theirs as it is George W. Bush's. Joe Biden can spin BS all day long, but the fact is that his vote, like too many Democrats', was a cowardly sellout. And it's working out as well as you'd expect. The war goes on, George W. Bush -- AKA President Runaway Train -- has absolutely no brakes, and dems like Biden feed us crap.

Polls show people aren't buying it. This effed up bloodbath will go fullspeed ahead until September and, if Democrats haven't grown a freakin' spine by then, straight on over the cliff with everyone on board.

If the past is any indication, hold on tight. We're going over the cliff.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; poll; disaster; war; On Iraq, Democrats and Bush are becoming flipsides of the same coin

What's Bush Have Against Americans?

I'm not sure when it happened or why, but it's becoming clearer that President Bush doesn't like americans very much. In fact, it's a little hard to look at his history and assume he doesn't hate us.

News came through a few days ago that the House had passed expanded hate crimes legislation that would address attacks on gays. Bush, however, has threatened to veto it. His reasoning was screwy.

Washington Post:

The White House responded yesterday with a formal statement recommending that the president veto the bill.

"There has been no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement, and doing so is inconsistent with the proper allocation of criminal enforcement responsibilities between the different levels of government," the White House statement said.

Tell it to Matthew Shepard. The problem is that there are many areas of the country where police fail (or, more accurately, refuse) to investigate crime committed because of the victims' sexual orientation. By making it a federal crime, people wouldn't have to rely on bigoted morons to investigate bigoted morons. It's basically anti-lynching legislation.

Bush has decided to side with the bigoted morons. Bush hates the same americans the haters do, proudly throwing in his support behind the bigots' cause.

The second group he hates would be sick people. Bush really hates sick people. And here's the thing -- he only hates sick americans. One of the many boons we've brought to the iraqi people is universal health care. Americans, on the other hand, don't deserve it.

Bush's first veto was of stem cell research funding. Of course, that might've helped americans, so that was a no-go. Likewise, a bill that would've made prescription drugs more affordable by allowing importation was defeated in the Senate -- the White House had threatened a veto anyway.

On the Iraq war, Bush vetoed a bill that would've required him to stop sending americans to their deaths -- eventually. He wouldn't have any of that. And, despite all the talk of supporting the troops in the field, they're still being sent over without adequate armor. As a result, the signature wound of the Iraq war has become head trauma and brain damage.

They can come home to slashed veterans' benefits -- or worse, Walter Reed.

Then there are the just plain old americans -- not sick, not fighting in the wars, not subject to hate crimes. The very best you could say about those is that the president just plain doesn't give a damn. If you need more evidence of Bush's dismissal of the importance of the common citizen than Hurricane Katrina, take the only thing he's ever done to help americans -- the tax cuts.

I know that my tax cut didn't really do a damned thing to help me -- it was chump change. Two bags of groceries and it was gone. The only reason we got one was to fool people into supporting a tax cut for the wealthy. So, he really didn't do it to help out the average american. We got the crumbs.

Sometimes I wonder if Bush doesn't think he's been elected president of Iraq. He sure seems to spend one hell of a lot more time worrying about that country than his own. In fact, one huge problem with the response to Hurricane Katrina hasn't changed at all -- National Guard units are short in the US. They're off 'helping' iraqis and that leaves us here at home screwed when we need them. After a tornado wiped out their town, residents of Greensburg, Kansas are learning the same lesson that the gulf states have -- the National Guard no longer guards this nation, but the nation of Iraq.

Not that he's done any better by iraqis than he has by us. For all his 'help,' he's managed to kill 62,942 of them so far.

Given that, I guess we should be happy he hates us -- Bush makes a better enemy than a friend.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; health care; prescription drugs; Iraq; military; veterans; Katrina; FEMA; What did we ever do to Bush?