The Long War: American Wealth & Well-Being Squandered in Afghanistan

On Monday, Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich made the following statement on the floor of the House concerning an expected vote on a $33 billion supplemental war funding bill:

In a little more than a year the United States flew $12 billion in cash to Iraq, much of it in $100 bills, shrink wrapped and loaded onto pallets. Vanity Fair reported in 2004 that ‘at least $9 billion' of the cash had ‘gone missing, unaccounted for.' $9 billion.

Today, we learned that suitcases of $3 billion in cash have openly moved through the Kabul airport. One U.S. official quoted by the Wall Street Journal said, ‘A lot of this looks like our tax dollars being stolen.' $3 billion. Consider this as the American people sweat out an extension of unemployment benefits.

Last week, the BBC reported that "the US military has been giving tens of millions of dollars to Afghan security firms who are funneling the money to warlords." Add to that a corrupt Afghan government underwritten by the lives of our troops.

And now reports indicate that Congress is preparing to attach $10 billion in state education funding to a $33 billion spending bill to keep the war going.

Back home millions of Americans are out of work, losing their homes, losing their savings, their pensions, and their retirement security. We are losing our nation to lies about the necessity of war.

Bring our troops home. End the war. Secure our economy.

See the video here.

Understatement of the week: Corruption Suspected in Airlift of Billions in Cash From Kabul by Matthew Rosenberg (Wall Street Journal 2010-06-25).

Politics: The role of the Supreme Court

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse's riveting opening at Kagan SCOTUS nomination hearing:

RIP: Robert C. Byrd

New York Times obituary (2010-06-28).

Don't be fooled by false deficit prophets:

Many policies that sound impressive when a politician promotes them don't actually save much money. Cutting foreign aid in half, for instance, will save $210 billion by 2022. That would get us 3 percent of the way there. Cutting earmarks in half is even less effective: It would save $130 billion by 2022. -- Choose your own deficit by Ezra Klein (Ezra Klein's Wonkbook/Washington Post 2010-06-27).

Cut military spending -- $1,449 billion last year! -- cut that in half and it begins to add up to real money....

More Klein: "'Debt' isn't a buzzword, it's a math problem. And it's instructive to try to solve it. The 'Stabilize the Debt' game allows you to cut, tax and spend your way to a better budget outlook. So go ahead. Choose your own deficit."

Third Parties: He who laughs last...

In what appears to be a massive protest vote, Iceland's satirical Best Party won the most votes in the recent elections in Reykjavik, propelling the party's founder, comedian Jon Gnarr into the mayor’s office and winning 6 seats on the 15-member city council. Now that they have won the election, will they take their new jobs seriously? Here's how Gnarr tried to calm fears that it's all a big joke:

No one has to be afraid of the Best Party, because it is the best party. If it wasn’t, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that.

-- Adapted from Political Irony: Humor and Hypocrisy from the World of Politics (The Best Party, The Best Quote 2010-06-27).

Music break: 12-String Bliss

Katie's Been Gone So Long: Surprising -- amazing, really -- to hear the incomparable but neglected Karen Dalton, a god of my Village days, amid the superstars and one-hit-wonders at Starbucks today (that's her and Fred Neil at Café Wha? in 1961 with some new kid on harp).

Her best album, In My Own Time, at Amazon.

The Economy: Do Republicans in Congress know the meaning of the word "insurance"?

Republicans To Unemployed: You're Spoiled, Drug-Taking Hobos & Animals, Who Shouldn't Breed.

GOP nihilism not only hurts most the least among us and helps most those who need help least, but it is also damaging the country as a whole in ways that will take generations to repair, if it can be repaired at all.

Action: Join the nonprofit Center for Economic Justice.

Musical Interlude: Black Water on the Gulf

Musical satirist Steve Goodie does his own (oil) slick version of the Doobie Brothers's Black Water

as heard on an interview with Dr. Demento this ayem on NPR (Morning Edition 2010-06-22).

Bonus: You'll find one of Steve's greatest hits here: "(I'm thinkin' 'bout nailin') Sarah Palin" (Impractical Proposals 2008-09-07).

Here's a more worthwhile topic than the future of General McChrystal's command:

The Long War: Warlord, Inc.

“The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country,” according to a congressional report. The security arrangements “violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as Defense Department regulations.” -- Warlord, Inc. Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan (pdf) (House of Representatives 2010-06).

Happy Birthday: Honeyboy Edwards turns 95

Not only an authentic blues great in his own right, David "Honeyboy" Edwards is also a living connection to the legendary delta-blues master Robert Johnson.

If you missed Meatless Monday, doesn't mean you can't do a meatless Tuesday on your own.

"In 2009, a landmark National Cancer Institute study of 500,000 Americans between the ages of 50 and 71 found that people who eat a quarter-pound of red meat or processed meat every day were 30 percent more likely to die in the 10 years of the study than those who ate 5 ounces of red meat or less per week. Compare that to research about vegetarian Seventh-Day Adventists, many of whom live significantly longer than the average American." -- Death by Hamburger? by Kiera Butler (Mother Jones 2010-06-21).

Analysis: Send in the Clowns

"China is a great big country that needs lots of stuff."

Stephen Colbert finds reasons for remaining in Afghanistan:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - $tay the Cour$e
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

And Jon Stewart is pretty sure now is the moment to finally achieve energy independence:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
An Energy-Independent Future
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Makes you think we should replace the clowns running things with professionals.

"Each generation," George Orwell wrote, "imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."

Boy, have we ever given the lie to that statement.

Environment: Metastasizing Oil Rigs in the Gulf of Mexico 1942-2005

This video by the Swordpress shows graphically how the Gulf of Mexico has been transformed from a wilderness to an urban ocean in only six decades.

Gulf of Mexico Oil Rigs: 1942-2005 from tsinn on Vimeo.

Happy Fathers' Day

Speaking of fathers, every artist, whether contentiously or harmoniously, is in a patrimonial relationship with the artists who came before. Here's a video, from the 1962 Newport Jazz Festival, of the masterful jazz vocalist Joe Williams at the top of his game. But watch Joe's reaction when the father of the jazz vocal, Jimmy Rushing -- Mr. Five by Five, takes control of the mic midway though the tune:

While we're at it:

Saturday Catchup: 2010-06-19

Saturday Catchup is traveling, but to tide you over til next week here's an uplifting story from the Miami Herald involving a blurry undersea video that looks like crime footage, a feisty sea creature not mired in oil, and a Coast Guard sleuth named Paul Schultz:

There were photos of two men preparing to scuba dive and a towheaded family nestled together on a couch. There was a mysterious relic settled deep into the sea floor. And even a puzzling video clip of splashing water that appeared to have been taken as the camera thrashed around under the control of something that wasn’t human.

“There was nothing on the pictures that said this camera belongs to so and so,” Shultz said.

After looking through the pictures, Shultz adopted the screen name of “Aquahound” and took his hunt online.

He uploaded the images on Scubaboard.com, hoping some diving aficionados could help identify where they were taken. Within days, the Internet sleuths had parsed the pictures and found some clues all pointing to Aruba, a Dutch island off Venezuela’s coast that’s 1,100 miles from Key West.

There was a plane’s tail number – and a computer search showed the aircraft was in Aruba the day the photo was taken. There was a blue-roofed building that searchers pinpointed to the island using Google Earth. And there was a school poster written in Dutch.

But could the camera make such a trip? Villy Kourafalou, an associate professor of physical oceanography at the University of Miami, said such an odyssey is possible. The buoyancy of the plastic case combined with various currents could have taken the camera to Key West, she told The Associated Press in an e-mail.

With Shultz’s search narrowed, the resolution came quickly. He posted the pictures on the travel websites Cruisecritic and Aruba.com, and within two days was contacted by an Aruban woman who said she recognized the children in some of the photos as classmates of her son.

She contacted the family, the de Bruins, and all the pieces came together.

“I have a smile on my face … I can’t stop laughing about it,” Dick de Bruin said in a phone interview from Aruba. “It’s really big news (on the island) and in Europe.”

Of course, by now the turtle has probably washed up on a beach somewhere, but it's for sure he or she went down fighting.

"The guillotine ... is the quickest way to sever a life that we know of, but no one would dare use it today. As long as it's not messy, we're OK with it." -- Dr. Jonathan Groner on the shooting to death of convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner by the state of Utah. Death by firing squad spotlights old execution method by Nicholas Riccardi (Los Angeles Times 2010-06-18).

The Media: Don't Get Even. Get Mad!

Here's one of Ben Craw's daily mashups of cable news coverage from HuffPost, this one on the ridiculous calls for an Emobama who can demonstrate that he feels our pain over BP's poisoning of the Gulf of Mexico. Partly a result of the news media's hunger for controversy, partly a reflection of the Right's deep well of cynicism -- had the president gotten emotional Fox would be polling on whether he was too much the girlyman, the controversy has sucked the oxygen out of more substantive discussions about how BP can be made to pay for its crimes, whether future disasters can be prevented by meaningful regulations, and how we can be weaned permanently, if we can, from the oil tit. As always, though, cable news coverage is good for a laugh: watch to the end if you don't believe me.

Politics: The long-term prospects of the two major parties

A new study -- “Demographic Change and the Future of the Parties” -- argues that, in the long term, electoral advantage belongs to the Democrats. The country is becoming more diverse, the author says -- younger and more educated and less religious, and these trends are all ominous for the GOP. The underlying assumption, though, seems to be that the Democratic Party trolling the waters of the new demographics will be one with an "ambitious agenda in areas such as health care, financial reform, education, energy, and global relations," in other words, one resembling the party of FDR and LBJ. It's hard to imagine, on the other hand, that the party of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, representing, as it does, Wall Street and international capitalism and the Pentagon, will hold any special appeal to the emerging majority of minorities and Millennials. “Demographic Change and the Future of the Parties” by Ruy Teixeira (The Center for American Progress Action Fund
Read the full report (pdf)
Download the executive summary (pdf)

Politics: Those wacky Republicans

Another great ad from the GOP (Goofy Old Party):

Reprise: the ad that made Dale Peterson famous.

Talking Turkey

"...take population out of the equation -- an admittedly big variable -- and Turkey promptly becomes a likely candidate for future superpower. It possesses the 17th top economy in the world and, according to Goldman Sachs, has a good shot at breaking into the top 10 by 2050. Its economic muscle is also well defended: after decades of NATO assistance, the Turkish military is now a regional powerhouse. Perhaps most importantly, Turkey occupies a vital crossroads between Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia. A predominantly Muslim democracy atop the ruins of Byzantium, it bridges the Islamic and Judeo-Christian traditions, even as it sits perched at the nexus of energy politics. All roads once led to Rome; today all pipelines seem to lead to Turkey. If superpower status followed the rules of real estate -- location, location, location -- then Turkey would already be near the top of the heap." -- Stealth Superpower: How Turkey Is Chasing China to Become the Next Big Thing by John Feffer (Guernica 2010-06-14).

The Long War: Endless. Pointless.

"Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it." -- The Courage to Leave by Bob Herbert (New York Times 2010-06-11)

Politics: "I Want Roosevelt Again" -- 1944 campaign button

On C-Span's Washington Journal, syndicated columnist Norman Solomon of Progressive Democrats of America discusses Barack Obama's arms-length relationship with the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, unaffiliated liberals, and the political Left.

The Right: Where is the Man on the White Horse when you need him?

Or is that, Where is the White Man on the Horse when you need him?

Modern American conservatism is based on an almost endless series of grievances. Author Thomas Frank coined a term for it: the conservative "plenty-plaint" -- a long and ever-evolving list of personal and cultural gripes dressed up as an ideology. But there's also fear! And while it spans the breadth of the movement, this is the year of the Tea Party revolt, when the grassroots right, disgusted with the idea of semi-affordable health-care and tepid financial reforms is rebelling against even its own establishment. And the divide between the grassroots base and its leadership extends to the very fears that animate them. As we'll see, the conservative movement's business-attired hacks and the hard-Right tea Party types waving misspelled signs out in the streets have some very different causes for alarm. So, here are ten of the most interesting things that absolutely terrify Wingnuttia. First, a few terrors of the real hard-core Right. For the Tea Partier, the midterm GOP primary voter, it's not just the anxiety over social change that typifies more traditional conservatism. A broad chunk of the GOP base today is animated by wildly unrealistic terrors -- monsters stalking them as the sun sets, perhaps hovering just beyond their peripheral vision. -- from 10 Things That Terrify Right-Wingers by Joshua Holland (AlterNet 2010-06-12).

Design: BP BS

LogoMyWay is sponsoring a contest to design a logo for BP, appropriate to its changed fortunes. Six hundred and sixty six entries so far, and there is still plenty of time to get your design in:

Musical Interlude:

Passing through Lexington, Massachusetts today caused me to remark to my traveling companion that Lady Gaga is not the only thing happening in pop music. There is, for example, Lexington-born Amanda Palmer, former lead singer, pianist, and songwriter of the "Brechtian punk cabaret" Dresden Dolls duo, presently half of the conceptual music act Evelyn Evelyn, and the perpetrator of the essential solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer.

How did 'Yes We Can' Get Reduced from a Quality of the American Character to a Political Slogan?

"Oh, to revel in the days when we could fix anything with duct tape and American self-confidence! Sad to say, it looks like a time capsule." -- How Failure Became an Option by Timothy Egan (New York Times 2010-06-10).

Accountability: To avoid a repeat of the current disaster, it is important apportion responsibility accurately

Here's the inside story of how the administration of Barack Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world's most dangerous oil company get away with murder: "It's tempting to believe that the Gulf spill, like so many disasters inherited by Obama, was the fault of the Texas oilman who preceded him in office. But, though George W. Bush paved the way for the catastrophe, it was Obama who gave BP the green light to drill. 'Bush owns eight years of the mess,' says Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California. 'But after more than a year on the job, [Interior Secretary Ken] Salazar owns it too.'" -- The Spill, The Scandal and the President by Tim Dickinson (Rolling Stone 2010-05-08).

Resource: The War Scholar

A Military History of War and Conflict Across the Globe 3000 B.C. to A.D. 2008: This timeline offers the user the ability to see what major conflicts were going on around the world in any given year or time period. Of the thousands of conflicts that man has been engaged in over the past 5,000+ years of recorded history, the site includes not only the major struggles but a sobering number of minor ones. This is an ongoing project which will take a great deal of time to finish but, in the meanwhile, it still does present some very interesting information. Most of the listings are color coded according to the continent or continents on which the conflict occurred. The primary source of information is George C. Kohn's Dictionary of Wars Please note that most of the dates for events that occurred prior to about 400 B.C. are only approximate; the relative dearth of historical data for many of these events does not allow for exact dating.

Change Watch: Obama is craking down on whistleblowers

The Obama administration's tough investigative stance on unauthorized press leaks goes against the president's campaign promises to bring back openness and transparency. Is the government under Obama mounting an attack on press freedom?

Politics: California Democrats should write in peace

On primary day, one symptom of the dysfunction of the California Left is the free ride given to generally liberal representatives, such as Brad Sherman in the 27th CD, who support the security state. It's not that a peace candidate would be expected to prevail, but that voters should have the opportunity to express their opinions on our militarized foreign policy.

Although, like his Valley colleague Howard Berman, he is too liberal to pledge the fraternity of congressional Blue Dogs (whose past and present members, for context, include the likes of former Richard Nixon aid Walter Minnick, Travis Childers, Heath Shuler, Harold Ford Jr., Kirsten Gillibrand, Gary Condit, GOP converts Parker Griffith, Ralph Hall and Blue Dog-founder now mega-lobbyist Billy Tauzin), on foreign affairs and military issues Sherman's record is practically indistinguishable from other Democratic supporters of the military-industrial complex, such as Jane Harman, who are more frank about their political allegiances. On a press call last week with a right-wing pro-Israel organization he revealed his plan to seek the prosecution of any Americans on board the aid flotilla that attempted to break the Israeli siege of Gaza. Citing the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Sherman said he’ll ask “the Attorney General to prosecute any American involved in what was clearly an effort to give items of value to a terrorist organization.” Gee, does that apply to U.S.citizens who enlist in the IDF, too?

As they go to the polls today to try to shoot down such corporate-sponsored mischief as Props 16 and 17, liberal voters, especially in precincts represented by dogs, might consider writing in protest votes for persons, such as MLK or Gandhi, identified with non-violence. Only in the 36th CD, where Marcy Winograd is campaigning hard against Jane Harman, does a dog face a serious challenge, but it would be news if other BDs such as Adam Schiff, Jim Costa, Dennis Cardoza, Loretta Sanchez, Joe Baca and Mike Thompson inspired measurable peace tallies. Also, it's worth remembering that so-called progressives like Lynn Woolsey,  Henry Waxman and others in the Incumbent Self-Protection League went out of their way to endorse Harman over Winograd. As long as the Obama administration and Congressional leadership continue to pursue illegal, ill-conceived and counter-productive actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, withholding votes from all but the handful of actively anti-war Democrats makes political sense.

quote unquote: James Madison on freedom's enemies

"I believe
there are more instances
of the abridgment of
the freedom of the people
by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power,
than by violent and sudden usurpations."
-- James Madison

Gaza: Hotlinks & Commentary

From today's Media Fix on Greg Mitchell's blog at The Nation: NYT today assesses, gasp, some new sentiment in D.C. that, surprise, maybe Israel is hurting us these days...; IDF admits it doctored audio of boat capture to make passengers seems like anti-Semites. Max Blumenthal: Glenn Kessler of Wash Post must correct story...; Foreign Policy: Must-read account of effects of blockade in Gaza....; As usual, more tough analysis and critical opinion on Israel at Israeli paper Haaretz than in American media....; Horrid: AP interviews Portland, Maine, filmmaker who was on flotilla ship -- first-hand account of attack, then to prison and beatings there.