Ever since tRump started campaigning, I have been blogging here and telling anybody who wanted to listen to me that he merely crudely distills the same message that most of the Republicans have always expressed more euphemistically. Every once in a while, even those "statesmen" let their guard down and adopted a tell-it-as-it-is, which is tRump's winning electoral approach. One of those was about Iran.
Unlike President Obama and the Democrats who wanted to to work a way out of the hostilities, most Republicans were hell bent on bombing Iran back into the stone age. It was such a sentiment that then candidate Senator John McCain expressed when he sang about bombing Iran. Recall that campaign moment?
tRump is making that Beach Boys cover song come true!
As a wimp, a wuss, a pacifist, war is never on my mind.
Of course, as most young boys are, I too was once fascinated by wars and battles. Back in grandma's village, I eagerly listened to what later turned out to be exaggerated accounts of an extended family elder's service in the military during the Indo-Pak war that birthed Bangladesh. As a teenager, I read books and watched movies that were set in the context of WW II.
And then I grew up.
It started with the excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front that was required reading in school. Suddenly, war began to make no sense. Mohandas Gandhi's pacifism appealed a lot more to me. But, it was not any immediate Damascene Conversion to pacifism. I continued to oscillate back and forth through my late teens and early twenties.
By the time of the Iraq War during the first Bush presidency, I was a committed anti-war nutcase. And have been since.
Reading Ernest Hemingway and re-reading Joseph Heller and others cemented my pacifism. War is hell. So much so that even movies that featured violence appealed less and less to me.
But, wars continue. Wars are good for business and politics. There are now new chants for yet another war against yet another country in the Middle East that has been in the Republican radar for a long time. That context compels me to blog about war and peace. There are others who tweet about their direct experiences, like this lengthy thread (and the comments there that I urge you to read.)
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They thank us, but they bite for war-hawks that want to put us in harms way for various, often very murky reasons. Before you get hung ho for war, consider that the human costs aren’t only tallied in death or injury but also in destroyed families and the theft of joy.
There aren't many GOP leaders that I liked. Well, not that many Democratic folks either. But, at least there are moments of a person that I have liked.
John McCain was one of those who I liked at least a little bit, despite the many, many contexts in which I found him to be nothing more than yet-another-politician. His role in the savings-and-loans disaster was one of my formative political lessons in my new country. His war mongering I thoroughly disliked. It was McCain who gave us sarah palin and joe-the-plumber, remember? And palin helped transform the GOP into a party of idiots and anti-science people, which eventually gave us the fuhrer we now have in the Oval Office.
When he was battling for the GOP nomination in 2000, his "Straight talk express" was scheduled to arrive in Bakersfield, where I lived then. I went to the public park to see him, and listen to him, but his bus was running late and I left. But, I did pick up a yard sign supporting him--even though I was not a registered party member (I have never been a member of any political party.) If a Republican had to win in the elections in 2000, McCain would have been much better than the simpleton W.
McCain's half-assed response to a comment about Obama being an Arab has always bothered me.
No, that isn't manning up @StephenKing. The notion that Arabs cannot be decent family men is racist.
In retrospect, and for Arabs, this was one of John McCain's more shameful moments. https://t.co/frL6W7bobc
But, I have always figured that no politician is ever going to be a saint, and flawed they all are. Among the flawed on the national scene, McCain was certainly one of the best.
Rove invented a uniquely injurious fiction for his operatives to
circulate via a phony poll. Voters were asked, "Would you be more or
less likely to vote for John McCain…if you knew he had fathered an
illegitimate black child?"
It was a cold, calculated question. Because, McCain had a dark-skinned daughter--the Bangladeshi girl they had adopted.
Bridget McCain was a seriously ill baby in Mother Teresa's orphanage
when Cindy McCain visited and decided to bring her back to the United
States for medical treatment in 1991. John and Cindy adopted her not
long after.
In my book, this alone makes up for all his political mistakes.
Today is when the star of the trump reality show will announce his decision after teasing the viewers with "will he?" questions. Recall how the star announced his decision on the Supreme Court nomination, or about pulling out of the Paris Accord? It is all about the ratings, the substance be damned!
It will be a huge surprise, an awesome twist, if the star announces that the US is committed to the Iran deal. That will be an unexpected plot twist, immensely more head-turning than JR returning to Dallas!
In all this drama, which is a complete contrast to the years of no-drama-Obama, let us not forget one fundamental aspect: Most Republicans have always hated working with the Iranian government. The Republicans have no qualms working with our frenemies, especially Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But, Iran they hate. It is simply that trump states everything in crude terms what seasoned Republican politicians say in polite language.
Consider, for instance, Mitt Romney. He toadied up to trump by sharing frog legs for dinner, in the casting call for the role of Secretary of State. Romney (like most GOP politicians) thought he could go about executing his preferred policies as trump clowned around in the White House. trump tossed him away like a used condom. Remember that?
Romney's immigration policies are no different from the ones that are being implemented by the trump administration hand-in-glove with the GOP Congress. This is a man who as a candidate asked the undocumented to self-deport. As a candidate, he trashed the economically unfortunate as takers, and wanted to shred the safety net--exactly what is being done now, under the fearless leadership of his running-mate, Paul Ryan.
So, later today when trump announces that the US is nuking the Iran deal (yes, pun intended!) expect most of the Republicans to applaud him. His rock-solid base will enthusiastically back him, and might even claim that this is exactly what Jesus would have done. If chaos and wars increase, then the chances of the second coming increase, right?
The title of this post? That's what the "elder statesman" John McCain sang back when he was the GOP candidate for the presidency. Don't ever be fooled by these maniacs! Apparently McCain's dying wish is that trump should not attend his funeral. Strange politics!
But, seriously, won't it be one hell of a plot twist if trump announces his commitment to the Iran Deal? ;)
I never watched any Woody Allen movie until I came to America. Here in the new home, I think my first Allen movie was Banana Republic; I laughed throughout. (Years later, when I watched it again, I found plenty that were not funny. I think it is a movie that was for a particular time, and not one for all time.)
I watched a few more. Once, I was talking about Allen with a graduate school mate, Steve. I told him how much I loved Allen for both the artsy and the commercial aspects in his movies. Steve agreed. And more. Steve, who was Jewish, said that I probably do not get some of the "inside baseball" jokes that are truly Jewish. We both agreed that whether or not I got those, Woody Allen's movies easily reached a diverse global audience.
Over the years, I have watched a lot more of Allen's movies. Even brought him into more than one post here. (like this)
For years the evidence has accumulated: Allen is an astonishingly lazy director.
As in the recent years. Well, the last two decades. Like Scoop. If it were not for the fact that it was a Woody Allen movie, I doubt if I would have even picked that up to watch. Of his recent ones, I did enjoy Match Point. And even though Blue Jasmine won good reviews, I could barely watch the first thirty minutes and I then called it quits.
So, why does he make these kind of movies now when he can rest on his laurels?
Allen is bluntly honest. “I’m lazy and an imperfectionist,” he explained in a 2015 NPR interview. “Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese will work on the details until midnight and sweat it out, whereas for me, come 6 o’clock, I want to go home, I want to have dinner, I want to watch the ballgame. Filmmaking is not [the] end-all be-all of my existence.”
There is a profound bottom-line. Pick your profession. And that can always be used to fill the blank in "______ is not [the] end-all be-all of my existence,” right? (I will not be dragged into this aspect of Allen's life, at least not in this post!)
I have always had a fondness for people who make it clear through their decisions in life that "______ is not [the] end-all be-all of my existence.” Because, hey, that has always been my approach too. While I might be disappointed that many of my plans did not work out, even those "failures" are not the end-all be-all of my existence.
The handyman that the friend suggested was even way more committed to that philosophy that I am. A guy who can fix just about anything. Perhaps a few years older than me. But, no ordinary tradesman he is. An undergraduate degree years ago. From the few minutes I talked with him, it seemed like his was a conscious and calculated decision on what he wanted from life and what would define his happiness.
I was so impressed that I bought a book that was related to his undergraduate subject and mailed that to him.
I don't worry about "______ is not [the] end-all be-all of my existence” primarily because of the conviction that I am here but merely on borrowed time.
John McCain, whose time might be running low because of the cancer, addressed that by quoting one of my favorite authors: "Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case."
Of course, McCain will be remembered for a long, long, long time. And Woody Allen too. Most of the rest of us, on the other hand, will be forgotten like the millions who have gone traveled this one-way route. Yet, we expend so much time and effort on ______, as if it is the end-all be-all of our existence!
I am certifiable. I should be locked up by myself and not allowed to mix with people. Oh, wait, I already live that way! I say ashram, you say asylum ;)
Allow me to present today's evidence for that mental certification.
I decided that I needed to find out what were some of the interesting historical events that occurred on March 27th. (So, this is what happens when the friend leaves me alone in the ashram?) How difficult such a question would have been in the old days before the web! Now, you ask questions, the web has answers. The problem is that we don't know how to ask questions; but, enough about that one.
Anyway, of the few that were listed here, this one caught my attention:
1998: The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug Viagra, made by Pfizer, to fight male impotence.
I suppose the first "Vigara" spam email went out on March 28, 1998 ;)
But, seriously, 17 years of the famous blue pill? There could be young people who were a result of Viagra-triggered fertilizations?
Back when it was new, everybody from stand-up comedians to the humor-challenged like me were making jokes with Viagra as the punchline. Now, nobody cares to even joke about it. Remember how Bob Dole served up ads for Viagra? You forgot already?
Only in America--one day a presidential candidate to become the most powerful person on the planet, and the next day selling Viagra. God bless the country and its multi-faceted entertainment theatre! ;)
And, of course, the "Puritanical" political party--you know, the one Bob Dole belongs to--had no problems with insurance companies paying for Viagra. I suppose it is one thing to get the penis all pumped up, but another should the penis impregnate an unmarried woman who couldn't pay for birth control pills. Remember the kerfufle when yet another Republican Senate old man ran for the presidency? You forgot already?
“Aren’t women’s sexual needs as important as erectile dysfunction in men?”
Where is that damn female Viagra pill, right? Well, it has been around for years already. You surprised? You know it exists--it is called the headache pill. Get the joke? ;)
Ok, seriously though, it is not as simple as that.
Viagra, for example, doesn’t cause a man to want sex. The drug
only works if a man already feels aroused, by helping blood flow into
the erectile tissue of his penis.
The brain, my friend, is the biggest sexual organ. If the brain doesn't care, well, no awesome plumbing will do the trick. If so, then how about for women?
On October 27, the Food and Drug Administration invited women to a public summit
on female sexual dysfunction—and what the medical community should do
about it. The FDA heard directly from women about losing their desire
for sex and the daily experience of living with, according to the
agency’s invitation, the most common form of sexual dysfunction for
women: female sexual interest/arousal disorder, or FSIAD. The following
day, the FDA held a scientific workshop on the challenges of diagnosing
and measuring FSIAD, reigniting a public debate about whether there’s a need for female dysfunction drugs in the first place.
While ED is so simple an abbreviation, even that is so complex for women--FSIAD. I guess everything about women gets damn complicated! ;)
So, the latest on the "female Viagra" is that it is a no-go:
Flibanserin is not "female Viagra." Viagra is a drug for men
whose spirit is willing but whose flesh is weak. "Female sexual
dysfunction," however, is usually not a matter of ability to get aroused
but a lack of interest in having sex in the first place. As Daniel Bergner explained in 2013 in the New York Times,
the prevailing research suggests that much of what gets labeled as
female sexual dysfunction is actually more just a reluctance to have sex
with your particular husband. "But for many women, the cause of their
sexual malaise appears to be monogamy itself," he writes.
Women! ;)
So, there you have it folks. It has been 17 years since the blue pill was introduced, which has since caused millions and millions of erections, and yet no pill for women.
And to think that such a post was triggered by a simple curiosity about some of the interesting historical events that occurred on March 27th.
Arizona will become an American-style police state. Racial profiling will be the law. Whites will be all right, just as they were in the Jim Crow South. God help everyone else. The nativist right seems to be calling the tune in Arizona politics today. Senator John McCain, facing a primary challenge from an anti-immigrant talk-radio host, abandoned long-held moderate positions on immigration policy and supported the new law. The governor, Jan Brewer, also being challenged from the right this year, did the same thing and signed the bill. The Arizona state legislature has tried to lead the nation backwards on racial issues before. In the nineteen-eighties, Arizona refused to recognize the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as an official holiday. This week the legislature’s lower chamber passed a bill that will require President Obama to produce his birth certificate if he wants to be on the ballot in Arizona in 2012. According to the Associated Press, “Supporters say the bill would help settle a controversy over whether Obama was born in the United States.”
If only Congress had acted on immigration issues all these years. Obama said it best: it is a result of “our failure to act responsibly at the federal level.”
I do wonder what might have happened if Janet Napolitano had continued on as Arizona's governor, and not become the Homeland Security Secretary. She would have vetoed the bill, I am sure; this was her comment:
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is taking aim at the new controversial law passed in her home state of Arizona dealing with illegal immigration, telling ABC News it is "not a good law in any number of reasons."
"That one is a misguided law. It's not a good law, good enforcement law," said Napolitano, who served as governor of Arizona before being joining President Obama's administration last year. "But beyond that, what it illustrates is that other states now will feel compelled to do things."
As I noted in an earlier post, we are counting down to the anniversary of Iran's 1979 theocratic revolution. Apparently the government is already engaged in preemptive arrests of opposition activists. Meanwhile, war cries at the Tea Party Convention (isn't a neat coincidence that the movie Alice in Wonderland is coming soon?)
Oh well .... One of the many flippant remarks that candidate John McCain made was the "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"
Foreign Policy lists the people leading this war chant. Just stay away from them :)
First the bad news was that Netanyahu became the prime minister. Even before the elections, back in September, I was rooting for Tzipi Livni, who I thought would then become the world's second most powerful woman. Alas, that never came to pass, and now we have to deal with an ultra-hawk. Obama will have a tougher time with Netanyahu than with most Arab leaders. Israel is at some serious crossroads.
Meanwhile, here is an excerpt from a commentary in Haaretz (note that the commentary is written from the future, from November 2012):
Obama had no chance in the snows of Iowa in 2012. So with Oprah Winfrey wiping a tear at his side, the most promising president ever announced he would not run for a second term.
What went wrong? Where did Obama go astray? In retrospect, the answer is clear and simple. In the summer of 2009, the president had to make the most courageous decision of his life: to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Granted, opting for confrontation would have been incompatible with the DNA of the liberal Democrat from Chicago. Ironically, however, only such a decision could have saved his legacy and advanced the noble values he believed in. Only that decision could have led to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. If Obama had decided three years ago to impose a political-economic siege on Tehran, he would have changed the course of history. The Roosevelt of the 21st century would have prevented regional chaos, a worldwide nuclear arms race and an American decline.
The war chant in Israel seems to be getting louder and louder. This is simply nuts! Imagine if Amedinajad gets re-elected. He will get bolder. Netanyahu then aims all his ammo at Tehran and the nuke-specific locations. Hezbollah starts lobbing whatever it can at Israel. Israel then blinks.
I suppose there is no point worrying about the swine flu virus now!
Want a real nightmare? Imagine if John "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" McCain had been elected prez ...... aaaaahhhhh!
I will be surprised if they don't--after strong opinions like this:
John McCain and Richard Shelby, two high-profile Republican senators, said on Sunday that the government should allow a number of the biggest American banks to fail.
“Close them down, get them out of business,” Mr. Shelby, the senior Republican on the Banking Committee, told ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” “If they’re dead, they ought to be buried.”
While the Alabama senator did not say which banks to shutter, he suggested that Citigroup might be on that list, saying the bank has “always been a problem child.”
Mr. McCain, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” echoed that sentiment without identifying any banks. Mr. McCain, who lost the presidential election last November, also accused the Treasury Department of avoiding the “hard decision” to let “these banks fail.”
Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Richard Shelby of Alabama said they want the automaker to seek bankruptcy protection, which would allow for reorganization.
"I think the best thing that could probably happen to General Motors, in my view, is they go into Chapter 11, they reorganize, they renegotiate their — the union management contracts and come out of it a stronger, better, leaner and more competitive automotive industry," McCain said on "Fox News Sunday."
Shelby, appearing on ABC's "This Week," said Chrysler and Ford as well as GM belong in Chapter 11 and then could get federal money as part of the process of reorganization.
Meanwhile, the treasury secretary, .... well, read this:
Henry Blodget thinks it is time for Timothy Geithner to go. So far, Geithner's performance has been shockingly unimpressive. It's not as if he's walking into the crisis anew; he's been the head of the New York Fed for years, and dealing with these issues from the very beginning. Yet on the really crucial problem of what to do about the banking system, he's been very nearly silent, going to Congress with a non-plan-plan that terrified the very markets it was supposed to reassure. Blodget also has a point when he says that Geithner has been mysteriously stuck on his original ideas. I would add that he seems mysteriously stuck on them, but not willing to pay the political cost of executing them, which is the worst of both worlds.
On the other hand, though I've so far been underwhelmed by his performance, we can hardly fire him, because who on earth would replace him?
So let’s get this straight: Robert Gates will be the Defense Secretary, we’re ramping up U.S. forces in Afghanistan and providing a reasonable period of time for a hand-off in Iraq, there isn’t going to be a windfall oil profits tax or income tax hike but there is going to be a huge set of business tax cuts – and Rick Warren is giving the invocation at the Inauguration. Who won in November?
I’m sure there will be times during the next four years when the Obama administration’s decisions on issues (e.g. judicial appointments) have conservatives banging their heads against the wall, bemoaning the fact that John McCain wasn’t elected. But so far it’s hard to imagine McCain would have been doing more than the incoming Obama team seems to be proposing — and with as much chance of success –to further some key center-Right policy aims.
As world financial markets collapse like fraternity pledges at a keg party and banks fail around the world, the International Monetary Fund implements an emergency program under which anybody who opens a checking account anywhere on earth gets a free developing nation. But it is not enough; the financial system is in utter chaos. At one point a teenage girl in Worcester, Mass., attempts to withdraw $25 from an ATM and winds up acquiring Wells Fargo. ....
The stock market plummets farther as investors realize that the only thing that had been keeping the economy afloat was the millions of dollars spent daily on TV commercials for presidential candidates explaining how they would fix the economy. As it becomes increasingly clear that the federal government's plan of giving hundreds of billions of dollars to dysfunctional companies has not fixed the problem, the government comes up with a bold new plan: give more hundreds of billions of dollars to dysfunctional companies. Soon the government is in a bailout frenzy, handing out money left and right, at one point accidentally giving $14 billion to a man delivering a Domino's pizza to the Treasury building.
The presidential primary season was just about in its peak last May, when I went to Ashland to watch three plays with freshmen in the Honors Program. One of the plays was Coriolanus, by Shakespeare. I had no clue about the play. My colleague, the theatre faculty, said that it was an absolutely perfect play to watch and think about, given the war and election season.
The folks at Ashland did a great job. (When the play ended, I was thankful that they did not adapt it to any other time period, as they occasionally do with Shakespearean plays.) Once again, Shakespeare punched the lights out of me--how did that guy manage to do all that fantastic stuff? And such profound dramas!
Even as the play was progressing, it was difficult not to compare it with contemporary American social and political events. Later on in the summer, politics unfolded the way Shakespeare wrote about--four hundred years ago, and about events that occurred more than 2000 years ago! Obama droppin' the "g" or not mentioning arugula after one mishap, all in order to relate to the commoners. Later on the hilarious attempts by McCain to relate to Joe the Plumbers, and the "betcha" folksy Palin .... well, Shakespeare portrays these so well in Coriolanus.
Has political life really changed very much since Shakespeare’s day, at least as portrayed in Coriolanus? If anything, it seems to have regressed towards it, having perhaps (but only perhaps) have moved away from it for an interlude of a century or two.
Demagogues and war heroes we have with us still, while discernable principles seem very few and far between. The crowds are still demanding that the candidates display their war wounds: when Mrs Clinton ‘mis-spoke’ she was trying to demonstrate that she, too, knew what it was to be under fire. The desire and willingness to present others in the worst possible light, as a sufficient argument in itself, is still with us.
But the best thing that can be said for the system is that it is so democratic. In most countries party leaders are chosen by political insiders. In America rank-and-file party members (and some independents) get to choose—and this year they upset all political calculations by rejecting the inevitable Mrs Clinton on the left and choosing the maverick Mr McCain on the right.
Millions of people have been enthused by the campaigns on both sides. On October 26th 100,000 people in Denver, Colorado, endured cold weather and time-consuming security checks to see Mr Obama. Mr McCain and (particularly) Mrs Palin have also attracted boisterous crowds. More people than ever before have given money to one candidate or another—and unprecedented numbers will take part in get-out-the-vote efforts on election day. All the signs are that this will be the third presidential election in a row where turnout has gone up rather than down.
There are plenty of reasons to withhold the final cheer. The candidates spend too much time repeating their stump speeches and not enough wrestling with tough questions (the Obama campaign’s aloof way with the press is particularly inauspicious). But the biggest problem is perhaps that the process is too enthralling. Americans have spent the past two years in a state of obsession with their presidential campaign. Even important global events such as Russia’s invasion of Georgia have been seen through that prism.
But for all that Americans can at least take some comfort, during these glum times, over the state of their democracy, at least on the presidential level.
One of the many historic notes of the 2008 campaign--the sure death of public financing of elections. Now that the end of the elections is (hopefully) less than 48 hours away, mainstream media and the blog world have started thinking about this, quite seriously.
Amongst liberals, the old mantra against politics and money has evaporated. Obama’s war chest is allowing him to do things few Democrats dared to dream were remotely possible. His ‘freedom of speech’, or at least his ability to speak frequently and at length, is now boundless. Such is the reach of his money that not only can he buy up primetime TV for the night, he can also run adverts in every state every night, he has campaign staff on the payroll in every state, offices in nearly all the counties of battleground states, and he has even embedded adverts in popular video games like Guitar Hero. With such a dazzling operation, the liberal money critics seem to have vanished. Could it be it was not so much money and politics that they objected to, but rather Republican money and politics? Maybe an Obama win will silence all those who want to restrict money in politics once and for all. That certainly would be a political sea change.
You might think that Spiked is always a contrarian outpost, and they seem to relish beating up on the American liberals and the British Labor. But, what about the NY Times? In its story, the Times notes that:
advocates for tighter restrictions on campaign finance said they were alarmed by the more than $1.5 billion that had been raised by the presidential candidates in the primary and general elections this year — the first time presidential aspirants have topped $1 billion. (The Obama campaign alone has raised more than $600 million.) .... Bob Kerrey, a Democratic former senator from Nebraska who serves as an honorary chairman of a group that fights for public financing of federal races, wrote an opinion article in The New York Post last week in which he confessed to newfound ambivalence on the issue in light of Mr. Obama’s success among small donors and the energy he had seen in the election this year. Mr. Kerrey said in an interview that part of his change of heart might indeed be because the existing system was benefiting Democrats, and he said he believed that many others in his party were wrestling with the issue anew because of the changed calculus.
Since the last debate, John McCain and Barack Obama have unveiled broad ideas about how to restore the nation’s financial health. But they continue to suggest that this will be largely pain-free. McCain says giving everyone a tax cut will save the day; Obama tells us only the rich will have to pay to help us out of this hole. Neither is true.
We are all going to have to pay, because this meltdown comes in the context of what has been “perhaps the greatest wealth transfer since the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917,” says Michael Mandelbaum, author of “Democracy’s Good Name.” “It is not a wealth transfer from rich to poor that the Bush administration will be remembered for. It is a wealth transfer from the future to the present.”
Never has one generation spent so much of its children’s wealth in such a short period of time with so little to show for it as in the Bush years. Under George W. Bush, America has foisted onto future generations a huge financial burden to finance our current tax cuts, wars and now bailouts. Just paying off those debts will require significant sacrifices. But when you add the destruction of wealth that has taken place in the last two months in the markets, and the need for more bailouts, you understand why this is not going to be a painless recovery.
The Bush team leaves us with another debt — one to Mother Nature. We have added tons more CO2 into the atmosphere these last eight years, without any mitigation effort.
Well, my intro class students know really well the argument about burdens being shifted to future generations--even they have started referring to how much their futures are screwed :-( They have pretty much adopted as their slogan "we are screwed". I am to be blamed though, as their blog posts make it clear.
If Iowa were not the first state in the presidential primary process, then there is a very strong possibility that corn-based ethanol would be a non-story here in the US. If this Wikipedia entry is correct, then we have the Democrats to thank for making Iowa so doggone important at the expense of pretty much every other state in the union!
Iowa is the largest grower of corn; the Iowa Corn Promotion Board points out that "Iowa has produced the largest corn crop of any state for each of the past 14 years. In an average year, Iowa produces more corn than most whole countries." Funny how there is no mention of government subsidies among the reasons for one of the FAQ: Why is corn Iowa's leading crop?
So, it is a no-brainer that the largest corn producing state, which is also the first in the presidential primary process, will then have politicians lining up one after another to sing the virtues of corn-based ethanol. Even a couple of years ago, Slate, one of my favorite go-to-sites, had a fantastic piece on the godawful ethanol subsidies. Slate is no right-wing nut case site, and in fact its people consistently are pro-Democratic presidential candidates. (This year, almost everybody there, but two, is pro-Obama.) BTW, right-wing nutcases also hate the subsidies, and Cato is one such example.
Well, one of the ethanol producers is bankrupt, despite all the subsidies! The NY Times reports that:
The VeraSun Energy Corporation, which accounts for roughly 7 percent of ethanol production capacity in the United States, announced that it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Friday.
Want more on how corn and ethanol feature(d) in this 2008 elections? Click here for details.
“Al Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” read a commentary on a password-protected Islamist Web site that is closely linked to Al Qaeda and often disseminates the group’s propaganda.
Oregon native, and NY Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof brings this to our attention. He adds:
the endorsement of Mr. McCain by a Qaeda-affiliated Web site isn’t a surprise to security specialists. Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, and Joseph Nye, the former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, have both suggested that Al Qaeda prefers Mr. McCain and might even try to use terror attacks in the coming days to tip the election to him. “From their perspective, a continuation of Bush policies is best for recruiting,” said Professor Nye, adding that Mr. McCain is far more likely to continue those policies.
