There are no innocent bystanders in America

Monthly Review published  my piece "Forget Guantanamo" in April, and I just noticed that they've posted it online,  so I thought I'd pull it over here to spur some discussion. Also cross-posted at The Crusty Polemicist. Join me below the fold, won't you?

An unnamed analyst at Barrons puzzles about low consumer confidence and finds it surprising that people are so negative: "But there is an expansion still under way and this is not a time of war, which makes the results difficult to figure." link

Gee, guess he is part of the 9 % of Americans that think Bush made our economy better.

And we say they live in denial... Those guys are not even on the same planet as us!!!

This idiot at Barrons says this on the same day Bloomberg reports that June is the Dow's worst since the Depression

The article below is a wonderful example of pundit cluelessness and or wanton incompetence, and I'm going to rip it to shreds in detail below.

Gordon Brown landed North Sea oil in choppy water

The Treasury is enjoying a windfall as oil soars but taxation policy may have knock-on effects

The rest of us may have been too busy partying like it was 1999, but on the eve of the millennium Britain was quietly, unwittingly, selling off the family silver on the cheap.

Gordon Brown's choice of that year to start selling off Britain's gold reserves with the precious metal's price close to an unprecedented low is well documented. What is less well known is that 1999 marked the peak for North Sea oil production and - by an unfortunate twist of fate - the very nadir of the oil price.

Instead of comments, copy these proposed Republican slogans into an e-mail and send it to your friends as humor. If you add more slogans as comments, I'll keep adding them to the diary.

The goal is to remind the citizenry how bizarre the Republican Party has become and encourage them to jump ship. Plus, they need to reform from within. Do Republicans see what they have become? They have become a parody of themselves! Sometimes humor can get past the denials, when habit and circular reasoning build walls. A large part of the Republican problem is an addiction to wishful thinking and circular reasoning.  

You've heard of bobblehead dolls? How about bobblefeet?

George Bush is an insulting moron.

Commenting on the nature of Ted Kennedy's cancer, Dr. Patrick Y. Wen, clinical director of the Center for Neuro-Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, told the New York Times:

the average prognosis for the most aggressive type of glioma was 14 to 15 months, while the prognosis for slower-growing tumors was two to four years.

Met with clinical news of the Sentator's mortality, the Whitehouse issued a statement informing the world George and Laura are...

praying for his full recovery.

(cross-posted at MyDDand paralepsis)

Barack Obama did not raise your gas prices.
Barack Obama did not ship your job to Mexico.
Barack Obama did not write your sermons.
Barack Obama did not deny your habeas corpus.
Barack Obama did not cast your primary vote
and Barack Obama did not dismiss your primary vote.
Barack Obama did not raise your interest rates.

First, go have a look at this page. This is the full list of futures for oil, ie how much it costs you today to purchase a barrel of oil to be delivered at the date you want in the future.

While spot prices jumped by $2 yesterday, the longest-dated futures jumped by a whopping $9 (with more to come today). This is HUGE.

So many writers and bloggers seem absolutely surprised that Hillary is able to ignore the endless bad news, seemingly oblivious to the impossible math and the drum beat by many to call it a day. But this is not new behavior for her.

In a certain twisted way, it makes sense that Sen Hillary Clinton is taking an excruciatingly long time to acknowledge what polls and voters have ratified since February: she cannot win the Democratic nomination in 2008 and therefore will never be president.

As befits a sideways kind of New Yorker, if she does not make it here, she cannot make it anywhere. Obama is not going to fail renomination as incumbent president in 2012, and she will be too old in 2016 as well as having an incumbent vice-president to contend with. This horrid and implacable truth must haunt her.

Hers is a common problem in other lines of very public work. What we have here is the reluctant, resisted farewell tour of that once-hot rock band, The Clintons; and after this, they have to hang it up because -- despite all their practice -- their pipes are shot, they just can’t hit the notes anymore, and the public taste has moved beyond their smooth but superannuated act.

More Yet Below

Listening to NPR this morning, I heard two stories which did an excellent job of articulating two opposing point of view, both wrong, which taken together helped me articulate to myself how scientific knowledge is formed, and the difference between a denier and a skeptic.

Acceptance of and understanding of Global Warming is an overwhelming action. Truly understanding what we (all of the US and all of us) face commands decisions about how one will interact with the globe from that moment on. Now, for better or worse, there are many (often illegitimate) reasons for skepticism about Global Warming. One of these is, quite clearly, an emotional desire to avoid having to face those decisions in the face. But, there is a path toward that decision point. For quite good reasons, that path is very close to that outlined by Elizabeth Kubler-Rossin Death and Denying for dealing with life's tragedies.

1. Denial,


2. Skepticism (anger for dealing with grief)


3. Delay (bargaining)


4. Depression


5. Determination and Activism (acceptance)

The Houghton Mifflin Company has just institutionalized climate change denial in the new edition of American Government, a popular text used in advanced government and civics classes at the high school level. This volume was written by James Q. Wilson and John J. DiIulio Jr.  The chapter on environmental policy could have been written by Exxon-Mobil or the American Enterprise Institute.

Some of my family are avid Bush supporters... STILL...
ANd when I tell them that the Iraq War was all Bush's idea, and a REpublican war that we got into because of fabricated artificial facts (Lies!), they immediately want to share the blame with Democrats by bringing up these comments from the left?
So what do you say to explain these comments from pre- 9-11 and pre- bush?
ANd how do you explain the ones that are the result of BUsh's witholding of facts and misinformation propaganda?

This year, Lefty Inc. has managed to take things to a depressing new level of denial and acquiescence...thanks to the presence of a multi-racial carnival barker named Barack Obama.

This election primary on the Democratic Party side is essentially a tie right now.  Real Clear Politics show that Hillary and Barak hover at 10,000,000 votes each. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...

Next Tuesday Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont voters must think about who will beat McCain.  Who will be impervious to attacks on patriotism, who will fight and who will prevail against McCain in the general election.  

Clearly both candidates are strong but I think the nod goes to Hillary – because taking a clear look at Iowa, where Obama’s ascent began, Iowa Primary wins are no bellweather for the White House (see below) and despite weeks of pro-Obama hype – yesterday Obama polled behind Hillary in a McCain matchup.    Time to come to grips with the strength of a Clinton candidacy.

I realize this is probably the shortest diary here on Kos and it has been a while since I posted anything, but I haven't seen anyone's analysis of McCain's press conference this a.m.