Gregarius » Crooks and Liars » November 10, 2008

Crooks and Liars (18 unread)

Open Thread

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 11:30pm EST by bluegal

Life holds few guarantees, but I'll bet the Ronald Reagan tribute at the 2012 Republican National Convention is going to be more awesome than ever! [Alternative GOP logos from Thomas Fuchs, see more here.]

Open Thread below....
Late Night Music Club with Eric B. and Rakim

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 11:00pm EST by Andy K

Lost in the shuffle between New York's old school hip-hop artists and the new L.A. "Gangsta" scene, 1987 brought us this righteous rap of a man giving up the thug life to go legit. Rakim's rhymes are backed by one of the hardest beats imaginable, sprinkled with samples including Bogie, Don Pardo and Ofra Haza; it's a veritable smorgasbord of sound!

(Extra love from me if you can name all of the samples used on this track. Or even just one or two! )
So much for Sarah Palin's 'misinformation'

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 10:15pm EST by David Neiwert

Sarah Palin whines to the Anchorage Daily News that too much of the reportage on her record was "based on misinformation." An example?

But just looking into the record. It was reported that I tried to ban Harry Potter when it hadn't even been written when I was the mayor.

When I was in Wasilla to look into her record, I never found any evidence that Palin tried to ban Harry Potter from the local library (she seemed to be more concerned about a local pastor's book written for closeted gays).

But the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, was published in 1997.

Palin was mayor of Wasilla from 1996 to 2002. By the time her term of office expired, four of the Potter books had been published.

It is true that the Potter books had not been published at the time there was a discussion of bannings at the Wasilla library, which took place in January 1997. And the whole Potter claim is based on a spurious e-mail anyway.

But that's the real problem with Palin citing this as an example of bad media reporting, even beyond the fact that her "proof" is afactual: It never made it into any serious media account of her record that I can find, other than to dismiss it.

Palin seems to be trying divert attention from the serious reporting on her record by building up a strawman about nonexistent reportage.
Election Day Victories for Americans' Reproductive Rights

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 9:30pm EST by Jon Perr

Overlooked perhaps in the historic vote that made Barack Obama the nation's first African-American president is something that didn't happen. With the defeat of the McCain/Palin ticket and its extremist anti-abortion platform, Americans voted against an abrogation of women's reproductive rights that might have taken a generation to undo. And by rejecting draconian ballot measures in Colorado, South Dakota and California, voters protected a woman's right to choose - at least for now.

To be sure, Obama's victory prevented the emergence of conservative Supreme Court supermajority committed to sweeping away Roe v. Wade. With the potential retirement of Justices Stevens (88) and Ginsburg (83), Obama may the opportunity to make at least two nominations to the Court. (There may be 14 openings on the nation's appellate courts, all but one which currently has a Republican majority.) Given Justice Kennedy's condescending and paternalistic opinion in the 5-4 Gonzales v. Carhart case upholding the so-called federal partial birth abortion ban, the direction of the Court and the fate of Roe surely hung in the balance last Tuesday.

On that point, John McCain, Sarah Palin and the Republican Party were quite clear. McCain not only supported judicial appointees in the mold of John Roberts and Samuel Alito, he reversed course to support overturning Roe v. Wade. And to be sure, the 2008 Republican platform incorporated Palin's extremist views on abortion, banning the procedure even in cases of rape and incest:

"We support a human life amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

In Colorado, anti-abortion activists tried – and failed - to enshrine the GOP plank's logical extreme in the state constitution.

The ballot measure known as Amendment 48 would have defined a "person" as "any human being from the moment of fertilization." That ultra-hard line position would not merely have prohibited abortions in the state, as the New York Times noted, "it could ban widely used forms of contraception, curtail medical research involving embryos, criminalize necessary medical care and shutter fertility clinics." Opposed even by National Right to Life and Focus on the Family (groups which argued the measure's "timing and language are not right"), the amendment was overwhelming rejected by Colorado voters by a lopsided 73% to 27% margin.

In South Dakota, too, residents voted down harsh new abortion restrictions designed to prompt a constitutional challenge to Roe. Two years after voters narrowly beat back a ban on all abortions in the state, Measure 11 supporters crafted a new amendment offering limited exceptions for incest, rape or the life and health of the mother. (That would be the same "health of the mother" John McCain derided with air quotes during his final debate with Barack Obama.) By 55% to 45%, South Dakotans said no to the unconstitutional infringement of women's reproductive rights.

Even California had abortion restrictions on the ballot. For the third time, Golden State voters faced a measure putting in place onerous new requirements for parental notification. (As the Times noted, "would make it difficult for young women caught in abusive situations to obtain an abortion without notifying their parents, even in cases where the father or stepfather is responsible for the pregnancy.") By a narrow four point margin (52% to 48%), Proposition 4 and its 48 hour notification rule were rejected by Californians.

Of course, while pro-choice advocates may have won some battles on Election Day, the war is far from over. Across the nation, anti-abortion forces continue to advance "slippery slope" laws design to gradually undermine the pro-choice consensus in the United States.

In the wake of their victories with so-called partial birth abortion laws and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, abortion foes continue to push legislation advancing pseudo-scientific (and unsubstantiated) claims about "fetal pain" and "post-abortion syndrome." (The demeaning language of the latter played an essential role in Justice Kennedy's shocking Gonzales v. Carhart opinion.) Other states look to enact fraudulent health warnings and burdensome new regulations on the operation of family planning center, laws which have left the entire state of Mississippi with a single abortion clinic. And 4 states - Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma - now require mandatory ultrasound procedures for all women seeking an abortion.

When all else fails, there is demonization. The day after Barack Obama's historic election, Jill Stanek, the source of the discredited "infanticide" smear against him, denounced the President-elect as a "barbarian."
MSNBC Votes For Four More Years Of Keith Olbermann

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 8:45pm EST by Nicole Belle

From emailed press release:

MSNBC has voted for four more years of Keith Olbermann and the top-rated "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," it was announced today by Phil Griffin, President, MSNBC. The new four-year agreement calls for Olbermann to continue as host of "Countdown;" additionally, Olbermann will play a prominent role in MSNBC's coverage of all major news events. He will also continue to co-host NBC's "Football Night in America" studio show.

"Keith Olbermann is at the core of MSNBC's current success," said Griffin. "'Countdown' is our signature program and I'm thrilled that we're going to be able to bring it to Keith's loyal viewers for another four year term."

"I'm delighted that we can continue to lock Countdown into the nation's political dialogue through at least the next election," said Olbermann. "Personally, I noticed that as of about six weeks ago, I'd been doing this show longer than I did SportsCenter, so it's delightful to have a true home."

In October 2008, "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" had its best month ever in the key Adults 25-54 demographic, and is up a tremendous 170 percent in A25-54 from Oct. 2007 and up 180 percent in total viewers. "Countdown" continued its dominance over CNN at 8 p.m., out-rating "Campbell Brown" by 35 percent in A25-54 and 41 percent in total viewers. Excluding coverage of the presidential debates, "Countdown" is the #3 top-rated show in cable news in A25-54. "Countdown" is also the #1 cable news show among young viewers, Adults 18-34.

Since the last presidential election in 2004, "Countdown" has seen dramatic ratings increases, up a huge 238 percent among Adults 25-54 and 206 percent in total viewers.

Congratulations, Keith! I like to think that C&L played a small part in your success.

Sadly, this news comes not without some detractors. Broadcasting & Cable worries that without a Bush administration to be outraged by, Keith and fellow "liberal darling" Rachel Maddow will be without boffo ratings material. Talk about being laughably clueless. It wasn't partisan rantings that made viewers come to MSNBC, it was having someone intelligently cover the news and provide context instead of dutifully regurgitating White House talking points. I am sure that Keith (and Rachel...and The Daily Show, come to that) will find ample news to keep viewers interested. And I'm sure that there will be moments of criticism towards the Obama administration as well. We're not blinded by partisan loyalty on our side.

Want further proof that honest coverage of news is appreciated? Look at this slideshow of the Obamas and Bidens on Election Night. What channel is the Obama team watching? Hint: It's not Fox. I'm just sayin'...
Obama's Gitmo Closure Plan: A Rose By Any Other Name?

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 8:00pm EST by Cernig

The AP reports an officially unofficial leak from the Obama team that closing Gitmo is a priority for the new administration.

Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

That's good. This bit isn't so good:

A third group of detainees — the ones whose cases are most entangled in highly classified information — might have to go before a new court designed especially to handle sensitive national security cases, according to advisers and Democrats involved in the talks. Advisers participating directly in the planning spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans aren't final.

U.S. courts handle cases "entagled in highly classified information" on a reasonably regular basis and the forms for dealing with such cases are well established. That phrase is a euphemism (or "lie", to the unsophisticated). Spencer Ackerman has it exactly right:

If there's anything the military commissions process should have taught, it's that reinventing the legal system doesn't work, as evidenced by the bevy of military lawyers who have resigned in protest of the commissions. The concern, stripped of euphemism, is that the evidentiary basis for many trials of Guantanamo detainees -- including, in many cases, torture -- would never be admissible in any court worthy of the name. That's the Bush administration's legacy. But it can't be the basis for cheapening our legal system.

So we'll wait to see what proposal actually emerges. But consider not only that this is one of the first initiatives that Obama is pursuing -- it's one of the first that he's leaking, as well. This is as clear a signal as can be sent that the Bush era isn't just over, it will be actively rolled back. How far it actually gets rolled back we'll have to wait and see. And pressure.

If the US cannot get convictions in either civil or military courts under the full panoply of law, even if those trials have to be held partially in camera to protect necessary national security secrets as provided for in law already, then the US has scewed the pooch and tainted those prosecutions indelibly with torture, illegal rendition and kangaroo justice. Under those circumstances even Hannibal Lecter would walk - and anyone who understands why these things are anathema to normal jurisprudence would say that was a good thing as a universal standard even if no-one would be happy about individual instances.

If the Obama administration cannot see that, then they will have made themselves complicit in the massive crime that the Bush administration has perpetrated through Gitmo, Bagram , Abu Graib, and a host of secret prisons and illegal torture flights. It doesn't matter whether travesties of justice are conducted on the mainland U.S., at the resort in Cuba or in some undisclosed location - they're still travesties of justice. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and any "hybrid" having any relationship to Bush's rigged tribunals would stink just as highly.

Crossposted from Newshoggers
The Inner Circle

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 7:15pm EST by Nicole Belle

Enclosure: [download]

I have maintained that the Obama presidential campaign will be studied and dissected by political scientists for years to come. It is, quite simply, one of the most impressive implementations, not only of Howard Dean's 50 State Strategy, but of grassroots-level organizing that lifted the entire campaign of a serious longshot candidate right into the White House.

60 Minutes' Steve Kroft sat down with the executive team of campaign manager David Plouffe, chief strategist David Axelrod (who will move to the White House as Senior Advisor), senior aide Robert Gibbs (who will move to the White House as Press Secretary) and communications and research specialist Anita Dunn to discuss the campaign about 24 hours after victory. They touch on the amazing organizing at the local level, the paradigm-shifting strategy to ignore the red state/blue state divide and those moments that threatened to derail the campaign, like the controversy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Full transcripts at 60Minutes.com
Huh? Right wingers proclaim they will work with Obama if he only governs from the "center right"

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 6:30pm EST by John Amato

I saw this last week and didn't get a chance to make the clip, but Bay Buchanan was on CNN and told us how the right wing will bring bipartisanship to the table as Obama takes office.

BUCHANAN: Well, it all depends on which direction the country -- Obama wants to take the country. If he is really going to govern from the center and recognizes that the nation is center to right, then we're gonna work with him, just as we worked with Bill Clinton to get welfare reform...

Obama won a clear mandate to lead this country the way he sees fit and America wants to get things done. So this statement by Buchanan, and dozens of other conservative talking heads like her in the days since the election, is very dangerous for the Right. If they are perceived as obstructionists during this time of heavy economic crisis then their brand of politics will be damaged all the more.

Personally, I hope they do it. They helped make the case for Obama with their constant personal attacks as well as calling him a "Socialist" and a "Marxist." Keep up the good work, guys and gals. You are making my job so much easier. As for the talking point that America is a center-right country, Media Matters has more.

...a poll conducted November 4-5 showed strong support for the progressive positions that Obama has articulated on the issues, rebutting the claim that the United States is a conservative country.
Several in the media have claimed that President-elect Barack Obama won the election because he ran as a conservative and that notwithstanding Obama's victory, the United States is a conservative country.

In claiming that Obama ran as a conservative, these media figures ignore the central components of his platform, including repeal of tax cuts for the wealthy, near-universal health-care coverage, and redeployment of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

Read about all the results here.
Bush and Obama: A study in contrasts

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 5:45pm EST by David Neiwert

Enclosure: [download]

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I'm sure it was just a coincidence that on the day that Barack Obama met with George W. Bush at the White House to discuss the transition to power, polls came out showing that Bush was leaving office more unpopular than Richard Nixon:

On the day that President-elect Barack Obama is visiting the White House, a new national poll suggests that the current occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is the most unpopular president since approval ratings were first sought more than six decades ago.

Seventy-six percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday disapprove of how President Bush is handling his job.

That's an all-time high in CNN polling and in Gallup polling dating back to World War II.

In contrast, Barack Obama enters office with a 68 percent approval rating. (Bush, for those wondering, entered office in January 2001 with approval ratings around 55 percent.)

What's remarkable about these numbers, though, is that they tell us large numbers of Republicans -- indeed, McCain voters -- are voicing disapproval of Bush's performance.

These fresh-born critics have essentially two options to explain away Bush without indicting themselves:

-- He was incompetent.

-- He wasn't conservative enough.

Often the critics will combine the two, but usually emphasize one or the other. And the current rift within conservative ranks revolves around one or the other. But there's a big hole in their rationale.

As we've pointed out repeatedly, the Great Repudiation last Tuesday was the product of voters rejecting movement conservatism -- both its governance and its politics.

The reasons George W. Bush is so unpopular is not merely that he was incompetent, but that he enacted so many policies, and as a result presided over so many disasters, that were a direct product of movement-conservative dogma. Ironically, it wasn't until they had proven disastrous that many of these Republicans suddenly realized he wasn't competent or conservative enough.

I guess you can't blame movement conservatives for their utter state of denial about the reasons for their repudiation. Yet it is satisfying to know that this denial will handicap them for the foreseeable future.
How Obama should govern

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 5:00pm EST by John Amato

As you've noticed there are a lot of Villagers trying to tell the world that this is a center right country and Obama better watch out because he will be punished if he listens to his left wing base and tries to govern what he got elected on. Please, give me a break. When Obama ran on the theme of change, he was talking about leading the country away from a failed Conservative platform from Bush that has led this country into ruin for the past eight years while the entire Conservative community cheered him on. And the Limbaugh crowd can chant all they want that they must become Conservatives again. You were and you lost.

Here's a message to all the Villagers. Change means going in a different direction. I may not agree with all of Obama's choices as he moves forward, but that doesn't mean he's supposed to be frightened by the cackling sounds being made by the DC insiders or bow down to the "conventional wisdom" crowd and fear for his political life.

Paul Krugman reads the situation correctly:

Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, is a date that will live in fame (the opposite of infamy) forever. If the election of our first African-American president didn’t stir you, if it didn’t leave you teary-eyed and proud of your country, there’s something wrong with you. But will the election also mark a turning point in the actual substance of policy? Can Barack Obama really usher in a new era of progressive policies? Yes, he can.

Right now, many commentators are urging Mr. Obama to think small. Some make the case on political grounds: America, they say, is still a conservative country, and voters will punish Democrats if they move to the left. Others say that the financial and economic crisis leaves no room for action on, say, health care reform. Let’s hope that Mr. Obama has the good sense to ignore this advice.

About the political argument: Anyone who doubts that we’ve had a major political realignment should look at what’s happened to Congress. After the 2004 election, there were many declarations that we’d entered a long-term, perhaps permanent era of Republican dominance. Since then, Democrats have won back-to-back victories, picking up at least 12 Senate seats and more than 50 House seats. They now have bigger majorities in both houses than the G.O.P. ever achieved in its 12-year reign. Bear in mind, also, that this year’s presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies — and the progressive philosophy won.

{snip}

Helping the neediest in a time of crisis, through expanded health and unemployment benefits, is the morally right thing to do; it’s also a far more effective form of economic stimulus than cutting the capital gains tax.

So a serious progressive agenda — call it a new New Deal — isn’t just economically possible, it’s exactly what the economy needs.The bottom line, then, is that Barack Obama shouldn’t listen to the people trying to scare him into being a do-nothing president. He has the political mandate; he has good economics on his side. You might say that the only thing he has to fear is fear itself.
Obama To Quickly Undo Hundreds Of Bush Executive Orders

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 4:00pm EST by Logan Murphy

It may take decades to learn the real damage George Bush has done to the U.S. and other parts of the world, but its nice to know that at least some of his most egregious mistakes can be undone.

The blogosphere has been following the countless abuses of George Bush and his administration for years, and it appears that our voices have been heard and that all of the hard work may finally pay off -- President-elect Barack Obama is sending out signals that he's ready to move quickly to reverse course on some of the worst Bush executive orders and get the country moving in the right direction again.

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases, such as Parkinson's. Read on...
Brit Hume says Liberals dare not speak its name

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 3:00pm EST by Heather

Enclosure: [download]

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From Fox News Sunday, Nov. 9, 2008. Wrap your heads around this "logic" from Brit Hume. Liberals don't want to be called liberals anymore because they are ashamed of it and want to be called progressives instead because we all know it's a right wing country. Or something like that. Maybe someone else can explain what's going on in this man's twisted brain to me. I thought the terms were just pretty much inter-changeable, but hey, what do I know? Here's the transcript to read just in case watching him causes anyone physical pain.

Wallace: Brit what do you think are the key debates that over the next year that Republicans need to have about the future of the party?

Hume: I think this is not the moment for the Republican party to start trying to reinvent itself. The Republican Party's opportunity will grow out of what happens in an Obama administration and if Obama is shrewd and so far he seems to be in the little, in what little indications we have now is he won't try to pull the party and the country too far, his party and the country too far to the left or let his party pull him too far to the left. But if he does, ah, it won't be popular and it won't work, the programs won't work even if they can be stuffed through the Congress and the Republican party will reap the benefit just as the Democratic party reaped the benefit here.

The idea that there's been ideological shift is belied by the polls and it's belied by one other symptom you can see it time and again and that is what is, what is, what is the liberal, what are liberals call themselves these days? Do they call themselves liberals? No sir. They still call themselves progressives. This is a, this is a political philosophy that an America still to this day dares not speak its name. And, and until that changes, I think we can safely say that we, it's a center right country and the liberals know it.

John Amato:

For weeks John McCain, Sarah Palin and the entire Conservative base called Obama a Socialist and a Marxist. They tried to paint him as the Distributer in Chief, taking from Joe the Plumber and giving it to Cadillac welfare queens who are much too lazy to get a job. And guess what? the American people elected him anyway. There are millions of us who proudly call ourselves "liberals" and donated boat loads of cash to his campaign. Nobody is afraid of the term liberal more than the Hume's of the right because their time has come and gone and they are petrified. And their brand is in the middle of a complete melt down as we speak. And as Bob Cesca documents, this ain't no right wing nation via the polls. I would really love to think that Hume is unemployable if Fox ever let him go.
Joe Scarborough Slips Up And Drops The F Bomb

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 2:00pm EST by Jamie

Enclosure: [download]

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While talking about the new administration, Joe Scarborough was talking them up by saying these aren't the kind of people to "flip you off" or say "f--- you", except there weren't any dashes in what he said. A few minutes later he starts to apologize about it, but Mika didn't think he actually said it. Well it turns out he did and they even got tons of emails about it.

This isn't Joe's first time doing this. Yesterday was the two year anniversary of him dropping another F-Bomb while talking with Tucker Carlson.
The flying monkeys are waiting to descend on Obama and Jamie Gorelick

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 1:00pm EST by David Neiwert

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I know everyone wants to take a breather after the election, but it's probably a good thing to remember that the wingnuts never rest.

Already, they're sharpening their knives should Obama select Jamie Gorelick as attorney general:

She has also drawn criticism for her role at the Justice Department, in which she allegedly created an intelligence “wall” that hindered counterterrorism agents in the years before the Sept. 11 attacks. Conservatives called for her removal from the Sept. 11 commission, but her fellow members rallied around her and said critics were distorting her record. The criticism grew so heated that the F.B.I. investigated a death threat against her family, and President Bush had to intervene personally to stop the Justice Department from releasing sealed reports involving her. Some conservative bloggers have already begun trying to derail Ms. Gorelick’s possible nomination as attorney general, pointing to her experiences at both Fannie Mae and the Sept. 11 commission.

What CNN reported at the time:

"I can confirm that I've received threats at my office and my home," she told CNN on Saturday. "I did get a bomb threat to my home."

She added, "I have gotten a lot of very vile e-mails. The bomb threat was by phone."

ABC News first reported the story Saturday.

The threats were "scary," she said, but added that she was "not intimidated enough to resign from the commission."

All this occurred after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft accused Gorelick of authoring a memo that he and other conservatives blamed for creating a bureaucratic "wall" that they said caused the intelligence failures leading to 9/11 (a dubious claim at best, considering that Ashcroft had previously testified elsewhere that this "wall" had existed since the 1980s).

The conservative noise machine leapt into action -- most notably Rush Limbaugh, who claimed that "Gorelick really ran the place while Janet Reno was the face of the Justice Department" and that she "erected a wall and because the Clinton administration determined that they were gonna fight terrorism not as a war but as a legal matter."

As you can see from the video, Bill O'Reilly also chimed in on Fox. Right-wing operative Dick Morris also said on Fox News: "Of ALL of the public officials in the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, the ONE who is MOST directly responsible, in my judgment, for 9/11 happening, is Jamie Gorelick."

Expect an encore.
Want to Win the War in Afghanistan? Forget Guns - Think Pomegranates.

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 12:00pm EST by nonny mouse

Enclosure: [download]

James Brett is an Englishman who, in 1999 while on a business trip to Peshawar in the north west province of Pakistan, had his first glass of pomegranate juice, and fell in love with it. He founded the first pomegranate juice drink in the UK, Pomegreat (.pdf). Further research led him to Afghanistan, where the best pomegranates in the world are grown, particularly in the Kandahar region. A recovering substance abuser, Brett was also aware that Afghanistan was a major producer of heroin.

In 2007, Brett was invited to Kabul to talk to farmers from various regions of Afghanistan about growing pomegranates. He flew to Peshawar and drove through the Khyber Pass heading to Kabul While driving through the Nangarhar Province, he noticed a farmer in a field of opium poppies. After the seminar in Kabul, Brett bought a large piece of card and a blue marker pen, and wrote 'Pomegranate is the Answer'. On his return drive back to Peshawar, he saw the same farmer again in the field, jumped out of the car and ran toward the farmer with his makeshift sign. His horrified translator chased after this mad ginger-haired Brit, yelling, 'Don't go in there, you could be shot!' Undetered, Brett talked to the bewildered farmer through his translator, about the farmer's life, his family, his children, how he lived and why he grew opium, about Brett's own addiction to drugs. Brett explained that pomegranate was not only the best option as an alternative crop to opium poppies, but was the only feasible one for the Afghan climate and growing conditions, and promised to return to the farmer's land a couple months later with pomegranate saplings. He went home and set up a charity called Pom354.

Brett followed through on his promise, returning a few months later to find the farmer had discussed this idea with sixteen other families with land around his own; all of them wanted to become involved. From there, the plan snowballed – in January, 2008, Afghanistan Television interviewed him, and other farmers asked him for help in changing their fields from poppies to pomegranates. The local member of Parliament and a respected Elder in the Tribal system wanted to know more. A tribal meeting covering the entire Nangarhar Province was called, and 200 Tribal elders invited.

The tribal elders agreed to finish poppy cultivation and switch to growing pomegranates throughout the entire Nangarhar Province by next year, making the region of 1.3 million inhabitants opium poppy free for the first time in a hundred years. The elders told Brett that their decision was based not only on a desire to maintain a level of stability, but because he was the first person who had ever come to them as just an ordinary man rather than a member of a foreign government or a military advisor, someone who simply wanted to see positive change. The tribal elders and Brett then conducted the official opening ceremony in that first farmer's field, now cleared of poppies, and planted the first pomegranate tree sapling. A national meeting is now being planned to expand the pomegranate industry throughout Afghanistan, with the broad support of the Afghani tribal elders as well as the government.

If you'd like to listen to an interview with this remarkable, refreshingly mad Englishman, tune into this webcast on Radio New Zealand. You'll be glad you did. (h/t Sue Gee)
Mike's Blog Roundup

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 11:00am EST by Mike Finnigan

cab drollery: Not To Do List

3quarksdaily: Ever further into the cocoon

naked capitalism: AIG: The Looting Continues

democracyarsenal: America has rejected the anti-intellectual wave that flooded the nation during the Bush era.

Scott Horton: Something aint right - besides Palin - about Alaska

unbossed: A fallacy about the election turnout
Iraq Provincial Elections On For Jan 31st

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 9:45am EST by Cernig

Finally, Iraqi authorities have confirmed the date of long-postponed provincial elections. There will be a roughly two month campaign season and elections on January 31.

Here's where the games start in earnest, because the Green Zone elites are in serious trouble if the elections go forward without a "guiding finger on the scales", so to speak:

According to a survey published by an Iraqi NGO, the Al-Amal Association, only 22.7 percent of 12,000 people polled in 11 provinces said they will vote for religious parties or blocks.

Voting for independent candidates is deemed a priority for 26.3 percent of the surveyed public of 11,000 Iraqis, while 23.7 percent said they will select democratic and secular blocks.

In the last provincial elections, in December 2005, religiously-affiliated parties won all the seats in the councils, with the exception of the Kurdish region and Kirkuk.

Expect every dirty trick in the book, from ballot stuffing to candidate assassinations to voter supression at gunpoint. And remember that secular candidates were meant to do a lot, lot better than they actually did in every set of Iraqi elections so far - for pretty much the same reasons.

More, the date sets aside four provinces, pointing up the "Kurdish Problem":

First scheduled for October 1, the polls were postponed when the national parliament struggled to pass an election law because of concerns over the disputed oil-rich northern province of Kirkuk.

The January ballot will be held in only 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces after the new law excluded Kirkuk and the three Kurdish provinces of Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah.

Elections in the three Kurdish provinces will not be held until after March 2009 and the existing multi-communal council will continue to administer the province of Kirkuk.

Kirkuk is the biggest potential flashpoint in Iraq nowadays and the Kurds are using every trick they can think of to write their own writ in the areas they claim. Right now, they're digging their heels in and refusing to consider amendments to the Constitution, which have been seen as just as important to reconcilliation attempts as these elections.

I just don't see these elections, and the subsequent protracted playing out of Kurdish differences with the rest of the country, as being violence free. The question really is how bad will it be and how much will resultant bad blood retard rather than advance reconcilliation. There's no easy fix, but at least there's now a firm, Iraqi-imposed, exit date for the US and its coalition allies. I always found it ridiculous that the Pottery Barn rule had been reinterpreted as "we broke it, so we get to tell you how to run your store from now on".

Crossposted from Newshoggers
David Brooks: The Republicans Have No Belief System, Circular Firing Squad

Posted: November 10th, 2008, 8:30am EST by Heather

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From Face the Nation Nov. 9, 2008. Following his interview with Raum Emanuel Bob Schieffer talks to David Brooks and John Harris about what Obama does once elected and Brooks says that he took away from Emanuel's interview that the Democrats are going to try to move too quickly and get everything done at once and that it will "freak people out" if he does that. Harris reminds him that would not happen even if he wanted it to with the make up of the Congress. So again we have more of this don't dare to possibly do what the people elected you to do, or at least don't try to do it too quickly or you'll be punished for it. I'm sure with Republicans determined to obstruct before Obama is even sworn in that won't be a problem.

What's really astounding about this segment though is that Brooks then goes on to say that the Republican party has no belief system, it's a circular firing squad and adds that the conservative movement has failed because it hasn't addressed the problems of today.