Monday’s Mini-Report

February 12, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace went off-message today, telling reporters he’s seen no evidence linking explosives killing Americans in Iraq and top Iranian officials.

* U.S. News: “A federal judge has ruled that a CIA agent identified only as ‘Doe,’ allegedly fired after he gathered prewar intelligence showing that Iraq was not developing weapons of mass destruction, can proceed with his lawsuit against the CIA. The judge has ordered both parties to submit discovery requests — evidence they want for their case — to be completed by March 15, according to the CIA agent’s lawyer and a spokesman for the Justice Department, which is defending the CIA in court.” Sounds like an interesting case, doesn’t it?

* If you haven’t already seen the PowerPoint presentation shown to reporters in Baghdad yesterday about Iranian involvement in Iraq, TPM Muckraker has a copy.

* Highlighting intellectual dishonesty on The Wall Street Journal editorial page is, as a rule, a little too easy, but Jonathan Chait said what needed to be said anyway.

* When even Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska.) is ready to raise CAFE standards, you know raising fuel mileage standards is an idea whose time has come.

* Stuart Rothenberg has a new Roll Call column suggesting that Dems have a realistic shot, depending on strategy and conditions, of having a 60-seat Senate majority in 2010, which should be the party’s target. Sounds good to me.

* Keeping this speculation in mind, Joe Klein suggested over the weekend that Joe Lieberman and the Dems just aren’t getting along, and he’s still mulling a party switch. Considering the GOP’s numbers and long-term prospects, it seems like common sense should keep Lieberman right where he is.

* And speaking of Joe Klein, he had a good post today with some necessary skepticism about the administration’s claims about Iran.

* Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), during a House hearing on the IPCC report on global warming, questioned the authors of the report about a period of dramatic climate change that occurred 55 million years ago. “We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?” And Republicans wonder why they’re not credible in the climate change debate.

* Ezra’s post today about prison rape is chilling, but worth reading. Ezra accurately notes, “There is no greater, or more common, human rights abuses in America than those occurring in our overcrowded, constantly expanding, jails.”

* U.S.-Russian diplomatic tension went up a notch over the weekend when Russian President Vladimir Putin, in some of his harshest criticism of the United States since he took office seven years ago, said Bush’s unilateral, militaristic approach had made the world a more dangerous place than at any time during the Cold War. To his credit, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, asked about Putin’s comments, took the high road.

* And, finally, my friend Ron Chusid noted a very odd story recently. Apparently, the Breast Cancer Society of Canada is accepting contributions — unless they come from strippers. “Local strippers who hold an annual event to raise money for cancer research were shocked this year to discover their offer to donate part of the proceeds to the society was turned down. Last year, the same group of dancers donated $3,000 to the society without incident. Former stripper Trina Ricketts, an organizer with the Exotic Dancers for Cancer fundraising event, said they planned again this year to donate half of the money raised to the Breast Cancer Society, but when she contacted the society recently, she was rejected.” As Ron put it, “It’s a strange value system where the opinions of some on strippers is more important than fighting breast cancer.”

If none of these particular items are of interest, consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Well, in defense of the Breast Cancer Society of Canada, they said they preferred a check, not a stack of folded singles.

  • I’m wondering how the Powerpoint people are going to explain away all that “Iranian ordnance” that’s marked as if it were part of the US stockpile. Also, the word “fuze” is a British variation of the term “fuse”—which lends some credence to the L-16 UK mortar being the culprit in all of this. And on top of that, “AZ-111” is a type of mortar, all right—it’s a masonary mortar used for thin-layer applications that require high-adhesion ability….

  • Well, in defense of the Breast Cancer Society of Canada, they said they preferred a check, not a stack of folded singles.
    Comment by doubtful

    🙂 Yeah, but have you ever tried to give a stripper a check?

    I’ve reached the sublime state of not giving one tinker’s dam about whatever Lieberman does. I don’t think the prospect of a Democratic majority bridles him too much, because once we get enough real Democrats in the Senate we won’t have any need of him. He might as well be a Republican.

  • Dana Rohrabacher has an excuse for being so stupid – he had his surfboard bounce off his head three times too many when he wiped out.

    What do you expect from an Orangutang County Orangutang (no relation whatsoever to the wonderfully intelligent Orangutan)

  • To his credit, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, asked about Putin’s comments, took the high road.

    Whaaat????!!!!!! Cocktail party one-liners are the “high road”????

    And Putin got it exactly right about our militarism and unilateralism making the world less secure and forcing smaller countries to opt for nuclear weapons.

    C’mon, CB, I thought you were smarter than some halfwitted “non-tenured” academic like Dan Drezner (whose stupidity demonstrates why he is non-tenured).

    The truth is Gates was a lying scumbag for 30 years in the CIA, and got it completely wrong with his “analyses” of the Soviet Union. You thought these assholes would hire somebody with a brain for that position????

  • If your report on Rohrabacher’s comments does not contain any typos, it is even stupider than you imply. The Cretaceous/Tertiary extinction event occurred about 65 million years ago – ten million years before the global warming event Rohrabacher refers to. Hard to attribute it to dinosaur flatulence when dinosaurs had been extinct for ten million years at the time.

    But, I suppose we should be happy that he wasn’t arguing for 5000 years ago, before the dinosaurs went extinct because they couldn’t fit on Noah’s AArk.

  • Whaaat????!!!!!! Cocktail party one-liners are the “high road”????

    Well, I was sort of kidding. It was “high road” as compared to Rumsfeld — Gates didn’t respond by vowing to start WWIII — but I was going for a dry sarcasm there.

    Sorry if that didn’t come through….

  • I’m a liberal environmentalist; from that perspective, I contend that CAFE standards are a dumb idea. They increase incentives to drive a lot of miles. A carbon tax is much more sensible.

  • To his credit, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, asked about Putin’s comments, took the high road.

    The US only rattles its bent, rusty sabre at people who can’t curb stomp our arses.

    “We don’t know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?”

    While our current cycle is caused by brain-dead Refuglicans spewing flatulence from both ends. Sorry boys, for the good of the planet you’ll have to go hunting with Dick “Dick” Cheney.

    Have the christofascists had two headed kittens over his blasphemous comments yet?

  • It’s bad enough that we’ve seen a deluge of Anna Nicole Smith news already. But there really ain’t no justice if she continues to get coverage while Amanda’s situation doesn’t.

    But maybe that’s because I’m closer to one woman than the other. I mean, I never read Anna Nicole’s blog.

  • I’ve sat through my fair share of miserable PowerPoint presentations, but that one on the Iranian EFP’s is about as lame as they come.

  • Edwards should advertise heavily on blogs if he wants a net presence. Or hire CB. To vet CB, I did a search on “fuck”. Only six occurences were found on the Carpetbagger and those were all quoting someone else. Hired!

  • On Tuesday, Mitt Romney officially announces his presidential candidacy at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, which commemorates one of the great anti-Semites of American industry.

    And that’s only one of the unfortunate ironies of the Romney campaign ’08 kick-off. For the details, see:
    “Romney’s Ford FUBAR.”

  • #12 said: I’m a liberal environmentalist; from that perspective, I contend that CAFE standards are a dumb idea. They increase incentives to drive a lot of miles. A carbon tax is much more sensible.

    I suspect people drive as much as they need to. In my experience, when I got a more fuel efficient car, my driving behavior didn’t change, but I did notice and appreciate the savings. Even if I was driving a little more, I was still using less fuel overall as evidenced by shelling out less dough each month. Isn’t it still a net benefit to society if we can drive more miles but use less fuel doing it?

  • Joe Klein was skeptical about Bush administration claims? Wow.

    Let’s see if this lasts, which I doubt. Joe will, in the end, toe the administration line.

  • Katie,

    The question is not whether CAFE standards might do a bit of good. They will do good and harm in pretty clear ways by creating contradictory incentives.

    Carbon taxes, on the other hand, produce exactly the right incentives. They encourage fuel efficiency AND decreased driving. A policy can combine them with other tax adjustments so the carbon tax isn’t regressive. Such packages are endorsed by economists and analysts across the political spectrum.

    So far, I have seen nobody–here or elsewhere–who can give a good reason to prefer CAFE standards to carbon taxes.

  • If a CAFE is up to decent standards they won’t burn your toast in the first place, thus there will be no need for carbon taxes.

  • Erik – Because CAFE standards are imposed top-down, carbon taxes bottom-up(this is assuming you mean a tax added to gasoline, coal, etc., that would increase cost to the consumer). That means people who have little choice(ie poor people) about what they can afford, where to live/work, etc., are most adversely affected.

    Also, I don’t see how increasing CAFE standards will give people an incentive to drive more. It will be a disincentive to drive less, but I don’t see how it follows that people will thus drive more.

    Finally, I’m not entirely against a carbon tax. I’d have to see how it is implemented, and how the money is being directed(alternative energy, mass transit, etc.).

  • Rambuncle, I agree with that implementation angle. Utilities burning coal and gas companies won’t suffer from a carbon tax, they’ll just pass the cost on to their customers (us). Slightly more tolerable if the money is directed toward putting them out of business by discovering alternatives to their products and/or methods. But then why not just fund alternative energy research out of the general fund? We could start with that $20 million that’s been set aside for the Iraq war victory party, since that’ll never be used.

    Don’t get me wrong, I strongly intend to do everything I can to see fossil fuel industries go out of business as quickly as possible. I just question the efficacy of the carbon tax method until we have other options for their customers. Once options are there, I say tax the hell out of them. Tax ’em right out of business.

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