Friday’s Mini-Report

August 15, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Rice gained Georgian approval for a cease-fire: “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded Friday that Russian troops withdraw from Georgian territory ‘immediately’ now that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has signed a cease-fire agreement. After arriving here to discuss the deal with Saakashvili and to show U.S. support for Georgia’s embattled government, Rice told reporters, ‘Our most urgent task today is the immediate and orderly withdrawal of Russian armed forces and the return of those forces to Russia.’ She said that ‘all Russian troops and any irregular and paramilitary forces that entered with them must leave immediately.'”

* Poland’s role in the mix: “Western leaders engaged in intense diplomacy Friday to persuade Russia to follow Georgia’s path and sign a cease-fire, but tensions rose after a top Russian general warned that Poland had exposed itself to attack by striking a missile defense deal with the United States.”

* John McCain’s new tech policy is surprisingly awful

Kauf von Zithromax online

, and opposes net neutrality. What a surprise.

* I stopped paying attention to the details of the John Edwards affair a while back, but as details emerge, Edwards continues to look even worse.

* Remember the mechanical trouble Obama’s plane was having about a month ago? We were told it wasn’t an especially big deal. As it turns out, it was actually something of an emergency situation.

* I really wonder what’s wrong with this guy: “During a question-and-answer session with Walter Isaacson [yesterday], Sen. John McCain said Guantanamo Bay is ‘one of the nicest places in the world to live in.'”

* Instead of just issuing fact-checking press releases, the Obama campaign is responding to McCain’s ridiculous attack ads with fact-checking videos. That’s a really good idea. Take a look at today’s edition.

* This really doesn’t sound good: “In the latest sign of trouble in the planet’s chemistry, the number of oxygen-starved ‘dead zones’ in coastal waters around the world has roughly doubled every decade since the 1960s, killing fish, crabs and massive amounts of marine life at the base of the food chain, according to a study released yesterday.”

* It looks like the CEO big shots have chosen their presidential candidate: “The top executives of America’s biggest companies are more willing to open their wallets for John McCain than his Democratic rival, donating 10 times as much to the Arizona senator’s campaign as to Barack Obama’s. Obama’s campaign seized on the findings of The Hill’s review of campaign finance records to suggest that the gap was due to ‘special favors’ McCain has given corporations.”

* This doesn’t seem like a policy that’s going to end well: “A tiny Texas school district may be the first in the nation to allow teachers and staff to pack guns for protection when classes begin later this month, a newspaper reported. Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District approved a district policy change last October so employees can carry concealed firearms to deter and protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting teachers follow certain requirements.”

* Check out “Meet the Bloggers” this week — the guest is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I) of Vermont.

* What do you know, the Ted Stevens scandal can get worse: “New information filed late Thursday by federal prosecutors says Sen. Ted Stevens made more than $100,000 in profit off a Florida real estate deal after a friend secretly loaned him $31,000 interest-free to buy a condominium. The condo deal came to light in a motion describing what sort of evidence federal prosecutors plan to introduce in their case against him.”

* No, Sen. McCain, you can’t take credit for the Do Not Call list.

* And finally, if you haven’t watched Baracky II, you really should. It’s a very nice way to end the week.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

We know that wingnuts scare easy and here is something sure to scare the heck out of them. Bigfoot found in Georgia. Local men say that a 7’-7” 550lbs reddish creature stored in a freezer is in fact Bigfoot.

Still waiting a pronouncement from The Corner as to whether Batman and Fred Thompson could take Bigfoot in a fair fight. On the other hand if Batman were to launch a pre-emptive attack against Bigfoot, it may have a better chance at success. Not sure about Thompson however.

  • Am I the only one a little bit perplexed by the fact that a guy who, by his own admission, has trouble using the internet is “uniquely qualified to lead our nation during this technological revolution.”

  • John McCain’s new tech policy is surprisingly awful, and opposes net neutrality. What a surprise.

    I’m a big fan of TCB, so I apologize for nitpicking. But assuming the second sentence was sarcasm, the first one makes a little less sense.

    Anyway, keep up the good work and have a great weekend!

  • “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded Friday that Russian troops withdraw from Georgian territory ‘immediately’ now that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has signed a cease-fire agreement.

    Or we will huff an puff and blow your house down…

    Republican leadership = Kindergarchy

    http://www.wordspy.com/words/kindergarchy.asp

  • Rabi –
    He is uniquely qualified; no one knows as little as he does! And knowledge in the hands of the people is dangerous!

    Be careful bashing corporations, they are responsible for most of the progress that sets America apart. Take the computers we are typing on: without companies and wealthy people that could afford to pay for them in their infancy, they would not have come about. No one would spend the time and money to come up with all of the technolgies and advances that we have out of the good of their own hearts; there have to be people at the top to pay for the initial products (like those old cell phones in the briefcase that cost $5 per minute). Profit provides the incentive to achieve, the incentive to innovate; competition for profit fuels it further.

  • “Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice demanded Friday that Russian troops withdraw from Georgian territory ‘immediately’ now that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has signed a cease-fire agreement.
    Or else the Boy Scouts of America will be armed as the Bush Youth and march on Moscow.
    Thank goodness that I’ve had Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush the Unready to accustom me to feeling embarrassed for America.

  • CB: This really doesn’t sound good: “In the latest sign of trouble in the planet’s chemistry, the number of oxygen-starved ‘dead zones’ in coastal waters around the world has roughly doubled every decade since the 1960s, killing fish, crabs and massive amounts of marine life at the base of the food chain, according to a study released yesterday.”

    Kevin Drum linked to that yesterday.
    Dead zones are just one component of a multivariate problem.
    That article is a totally + totally watered down version of the real underlying issues.

    If you really want a full picture of the problem read this:

    http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/worlds-oceans-doomed-report-17140.html

  • Rabi –
    He is uniquely qualified; no one knows as little as he does! And knowledge in the hands of the people is dangerous!

    Ha, I almost typed that.

    Anyways, it’s too bad that he says some truly asinine things in this plan, because other aspects are good. America is graduating a disturbingly low number of math and science majors, and that needs to change if we are to keep our status as a global innovator. Also, I support his desire to keep corporations in the United States by making the US a desirable place to do business, as opposed to simply punishing them for working outside of America.
    I actually agree with most of McCain’s positions on trade and business, though with more oversight that McCain would like. It’s too bad that that’s overshadowed by how backwards he is on everything else.

  • Gee, who could have foreseen that the Russians would take advantage of the fact that the U.S. military only has about twelve guys who aren’t in Iraq or Afganistan to start flexing its regionally superior armed forces to get whatever it wants in Eastern Europe?

    Anybody?

    Oh, everybody did. Except the President and his National Security Advisor, apparently. I guess you’d call that “Putin the wool over George and Condi’s eyes.”

    I know, bad pun. It’s Friday. Bite me. 😉

  • Be careful bashing corporations, they are responsible for most of the progress that sets America apart. Take the computers we are typing on: without companies and wealthy people that could afford to pay for them in their infancy, they would not have come about.

    Setting aside the sycophantic idea that we should make sure that the rich stay rich so that we can all eventually enjoy the benefits of whatever it is they adopt next, your knowledge of the history of personal computing is sadly lacking. Most corporations adopted the client/server computing architecture and they were perfectly happy with it because control of the network remained centralized. Personal computing grew first because of BBS’s and then exploded with public access to the Internet – a government project.

  • For some of those witnessing the fighting in the Caucasus over the past few days, the narrative is straightforward and easy. The plucky republic of Georgia, with just a few million citizens, was attacked by its giant eastern neighbour, Russia. Add to this all the stereotypes of the cold war era, and you are presented with a truly David and Goliath interpretation – with all its accompanying connotations of good and evil. While this version of events is being written in much of the western media, the facts present a different picture.

    Let me be absolutely clear. This is not a conflict of Russia’s making; this is not a conflict of Russia’s choosing. There are no winners from this conflict. Hours before the Georgian invasion, Russia had been working to secure a United Nations Security Council statement calling for a renunciation of force by both Georgia and South Ossetians. The statement that could have averted bloodshed was blocked by western countries.

    Last Friday, after the world’s leaders had arrived at the Beijing Olympics, Georgian troops launched an all-out assault on the region of South Ossetia, which has enjoyed de facto independence for more than 16 years. The majority of the region’s population are Russian citizens. Under the terms of the 1992 agreement to which Georgia is a party, they are afforded protection by a small number of Russian peacekeeping soldiers. The ground and air attack resulted in the killing of peacekeepers and the death of an estimated 1,600 civilians, creating a humanitarian disaster and leading to an exodus of 30,000 refugees. The Georgian regime refused to allow a humanitarian corridor to be established and bombarded a humanitarian convoy. There is also clear evidence of atrocities having been committed – so serious and systematic that they constitute acts of genocide.

    There can be little surprise, therefore, that Russia responded to this unprovoked assault on its citizens by launching a military incursion into South Ossetia. No country in the world would idly stand by as its citizens are killed and driven from their homes. Russia repeatedly warned Tbilisi that it would protect its citizens by force if necessary, and its actions are entirely consistent with international law, including article 51 of the UN charter on the right of self-defence.

  • Condoleezza Rice: “…all Russian troops and any irregular and paramilitary forces that entered with them must leave immediately.”

    Why can’t Bush officials learn that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar? Their bellicose “must” statements have done us way more harm than good. With demands like this, Putin will probably hang out in Georgia for a while longer just to show that there isn’t a damn thing that we can do about it.

  • John McCain’s new tech policy…opposes net neutrality.

    This belongs on the front pages and in Obama’s commercials.

  • Thank you drumas for that nice overview of how this mess REALLY got started. The US news media, of course, is falling in lockstep with the Bush Adminstration’s and McCain’s characterizations of the situation. As is the norm these days, one has to look to foreign news agencies to get any sense of balance or reality. The BBC has a good story on this:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7562611.stm

  • I don’t know about y’all, but when I’m a cop responding to a school shooting, I want as many people as possible to be packing heat. That way, I’ll have a much harder time separating the shooters from the gun-toting victims. Besides, stray bullets are both fun and educational.

    Who needs cops if we can ALL be cops?

  • Al Gore invented the Internet and John McCain invented the Do Not Call list.

    But who’s responsible for CB’s item on Ted Steven’s $31,000 interest free loan to buy a Florida condo getting a mention on “Disney World Vacation Packages?”

    Say, “Good Night,” Gracie.

  • I stopped paying attention to the details of the John Edwards affair a while back, but as details emerge, Edwards continues to look even worse.

    That a guy as smart as Edwards could fall for a New Age Hollywierd bimbo like Rielle. Under her original name, she was the model for a character in a Jay McInerny novel 24 years ago – a wannabee actress in New York with one talent: schtupping anything that walked. You can throw a stick on Sunset Boulevard in any direction and hit ten of her: talentless wannabe’s who never let Reality come between them and their ambition. If you want to see how sad she is, go to YouTube and watch her “webisodes.” She gives a wholly new and original definition to the term “amateurish.”

    As to the whole business with her and the Youngs – yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck! Iiiiiiiiicky!!!!!! That article has more information on that in three sentences than you would ever want to know.

    If this whole thing was a telenovela you wouldn’t beleive it.

  • I stopped paying attention to the details of the John Edwards affair a while back, but as details emerge, Edwards continues to look even worse.

    That’s what he hoped–that people would hear his story (when he hoped many wouldn’t even pay attention on the Friday before the Olympics) and then think they heard it all. He was hoping people wouldn’t notice how full of holes his story is.

    The mistake he made was to go on tv and lie, giving reporters an opening to dig further into the story and keep the story going. It’s the classic case of the cover up turning out to do more harm than the original crime–especially now that it looks like Edwards might have violated campaign finance laws to pay hush money to his mistress.

  • Stevens moves to suppress evidence against him. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/stevens_claims_constitutional.php

    I was gonna drop this over there But I couldn’t get it to work.

    The Jefferson case involved a physical search of the congressman’s office in the Capitol. However, as I recall, the FBI didn’t return the $$$$ found in Jefferson’s (home?) freezer – So that evidence remained available. It appears the court interpreted that a nexus be established between executive behavior and the Speech or Debate Clause restrictions before the court will exclude evidence. This case may help to locate where it is.
    Congresscritters ought to be given a wide berth by the exec but its members cannot be given blanket immunity from criminal investigative techniques.
    Without denying some linkage exists that could give the court a reason/excuse to find for Stevens wholly or in part, there are differences.
    Glaring differences: FBI agents did not raid Stevens office in the Capitol; It is likely that most phone calls calls did not originate from the Capitol Office; They have a ton of evidence gathered in AK that cannot possibly be protected under Jefferson.

  • An ’emergency’ is when the pilots think something bad is about to happen. I mean, bad things can happen without them knowing, they’re usually the first to figure it out, but there are a significant (well, portion in ten that can be counted on fingers) where no one knew it was an emergency until there was no chance to declare one.

    For all we know, limited pitch capacity may be the normal effect to that type of aircraft of having the rear exit open at cruising altitude.

    —

    Also, without Net-Neutrality, you don’t have an open market. You have places where consumers cannot choose what products to buy because there aren’t any differences between them. It doesn’t matter which phone company you get your wireless from, for instance – your devices, programs, data, and interconnectivity are non-portable. Net-neutrality keeps the internet from becoming a mere extension of that lack of choice – you could only access products your service allows, and not those on another network.

    Which would mean, basically, we could never have an application like World of Warcraft where people, no matter their computer or provider, can play a game together. You would have the pool of users with a Wii and a pool of users with an X-Box and nary the twain shall meet and play together, or even the same games.

  • For those who occasionally need to step out from the weeds and glimpse the forest, I’d highly recommend taking an hour and watching tonight’s episode of Bill Moyer’s Journal with guest, Andrew J. Bacevich.

    The program is available online. If, like our dear friend libra, you’d prefer to read rather than watch, a transcript is just a click away.

    Bacevich has so much to say that no excerpt would do him justice, but for anyone who might be tempted to click away before he finishes, allow me to give away the ending:

    ANDREW BACEVICH: We’re going to have a long argument about the Iraq War… And that argument is going to be – is going to cause us, I hope, to ask serious questions about where this war came from.

    How did we come to be a nation in which we really thought that we could transform the greater Middle East with our army?

    What have been the costs that have been imposed on this country? …Where is that money coming from? How else could it have been spent? For what? Who bears the burden?

    Who died? Who suffered loss? Who’s in hospitals? Who’s suffering from PTSD? And was it worth it?

    … It was a fundamental mistake. It never should have been undertaking. And we’re never going to do this kind of thing again. And that might be the moment when we look ourselves in the mirror. And we see what we have become. And perhaps undertake an effort to make those changes in the American way of life that will enable us to preserve for future generations that which we value most about the American way of life.

    Hope springs eternal.

  • John McCain’s new tech policy is surprisingly awful, and opposes net neutrality.

    Come on, you can’t expect the McMaverick to remain neutral. Neutrality is for sissies!

    I also assume you meant “unsurprisingly awful.”

    The statement credited McCain for guiding a wireless spectrum policy that encouraged widespread adoption of mobile phones and Wi-Fi technology.

    I assume the article is referring to this:

    “Municipal Wi-Fi supporters gained a powerful ally today as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) introduced legislation promoting local governments’ rights to launch wireless networks in direct competition to incumbent carriers.”

    If memory serves, local government owned wi-fi died when the lgs realized it was too expensive.

  • As to the whole business with her and the Youngs – yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck! Iiiiiiiiicky!!!!!!

    I second that, Tom. The implications are creepy. And if they did what it seems they did, have Young fall on his sword for Edwards, just wow. I wonder how much you get paid to do that job?

  • “Thank goodness that I’ve had Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush the Unready to accustom me to feeling embarrassed for America.”

    You forgot Ford.

  • * This doesn’t seem like a policy that’s going to end well: “A tiny Texas school district may be the first in the nation to allow teachers and staff to pack guns for protection when classes begin later this month […] — CB

    Eh? Not going to end well? What’s wrong with it? Or *you*, for that matter?

    Haven’t you ever heard the one about a Jewish lad, who was so terrible at math that he was kicked out from school after school? As the las resort, his parents managed to place him in a Catholic school and, immediately, his knowledge of math and his grades improved, tenfold. When asked about the 180 turn — is it the teacher? is it the textbooks? — he said: “The first day, when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren’t joking”

    When the county built its consolidated (with the “city” — population all of 4.5K) highschool, it built it right across the street (well… across a gravel road) from the county jail. Just so the little blighters would *know* what awaits them, if they don’t study hard.

    I’d think that a gun-packing teacher would be a *much more* effective means of motivation than either a “guy nailed to a plus sign”, *or* looking out the window at “or else”. I say *kudos* to the Texas’ Harrold Independent School District (Harrold, call me); we need more like them!

  • @ beep52
    I watched Bill Moyer’s Journal last night with Andrew J. Bacevich. I was wondering as I watched it Is anyone else watching this? His ability to look at the whole situation with jaw dropping clarity just blew my mind. In a sense it made me sad because this is a person who will probably never see the light of the MSM. They would rather spend their time talking about that blot on western civilization Corsi. He speaks the truth and spreads the blame where it belongs. I especially liked that he acknowledged the Republican’s favorite punching bag Jimmy Carter was right and that every administration, congress and senate has dropped the ball since then and allowed the US to become a pawn of the Oil nations and China. They now effectively own our economy and as he says the US has lost its ability to influence anybody when we are beholden to these nations. I was thinking where is the candidate with this intelligence and clarity?
    One of the best lines (paraphrase) The Congress and Senate long ago stopped representing the people and only exists to get themselves reelected.
    Sad , very sad

  • About this Georgia/South Ossetia thing, I first thought that Russia over reacted, having read all the articles about the conflict, I now feel that Russia was not just teling Georgia to stay out of this breakaway territory, they were telling the US to stay out of it. In one comment, I found my new description of McCain, the writer said the US should stop allowing mental midgets to wander the world..
    McCain in a nutshell _ Mental midget.

  • Rice persuaded Georgia to sign on to a cease fire?

    For an encore is she going to have the school nerd sign a peace treaty with the school bully who took his lunch money?

    Let no one accuse Rice of being a lightweight, she takes on the tough stuff first!

    Remind me again which party has the best military policy chops?

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