* Vulnerability Zone ~ this is not about getting in touch with your inner self – It is as a geographic area whose population lives within range of a worst-case toxic gas release. The Center for American Progress, in a report “Chemical Security 101: What You Don’t Have Can’t Leak, or Be Blown Up by Terrorists." notes that this danger is not limited to remote locations. There are currently 303 facilities in 41 states using chemicals that potentially endanger 110 million Americans. They are facilities subject to terrorist attacks (or accidents) that could release toxic chemicals and gasses. The bad news is that the Department of Homeland Security has done little to improve securing these facilities or encouraging facility change. The good news is that there are viable alternatives that would substantially reduce the danger that these facilities present by converting to alternative chemicals or processes. One example involves the production of bleach. “Thirty bleach plants could remove danger to some 50 million Americans by generating chlorine on-site without rail shipment and bulk storage. This includes the Clorox Company in Los Angeles, which puts over 5.5 million people in danger.” The linked article is a fascinating and educational read and includes an interactive map that identifies 101 of the most dangerous chemical facilities in America. What is in your backyard?

* Never say never ~ The Bush administration did something it said it would never do – set a time line for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. I found the following evaluation of particular interest:

An Iraq expert and former ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, issued a statement on the status of forces agreement (SOFA) recently signed by the U.S. and Iraq. His remarks included: “The agreement represents a stunning and humiliating reversal of course by the Bush administration, which had vehemently opposed any timetable for withdrawal from Iraq… For the last two years, President Bush has pretended that Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki is a democrat and an American ally. In fact, Maliki is a sectarian Shiite politician who heads a government dominated by pro-Iranian religious parties. The U.S. presence now no longer serves the interests of Iraq’s ruling Shiite religious parties or their Iranian allies, so we are now being asked to leave.” The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation offers an in-depth analysis of the U.S.-Iraq security agreement.

Truth be told, the Bush administration never understood Iraqi political and religious dynamics and rarely made an attempt to become better informed. The same can be said of the Bush administration as a whole (hole). Bob Woodward noted in his most recent book that Bush is not intellectually inquisitive and does not like open debate. We can only hope Barack Obama does not govern from a bubble that is heavily tinted with ideology.

* Sharing the holiday spirit – A reader sent this suggestion that merits consideration and action. When doing your Christmas/Chanukah cards, take one card and send it to this address:

A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20307-5001

* Keeping the auto industry on target – In the December 8, 2008 issue of Newsweek Fareed Zakaria interviews Al Gore on a variety of subjects. One of the questions asked, “Would you bail out the carmakers?” Gore responded, “Whatever assistance might be forthcoming should be focused on speeding the changes that are absolutely essential to ensure that our companies are competitive in the global marketplace. When I was vice president, I initiated a program called the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. The federal government invested over a billion dollars in partnership with the Big Three to focus on the accelerated development of advanced high-efficiency vehicles. But as soon as they felt they were off the hook at the end of 2000 (Bush was about to take office), they pulled the plug and walked away.”

In many respects the trouble burdening the American auto industry is a result of myopic and greedy management. Gore comments that GM allowed Toyota a seven-year head start in developing the hybrid drive train in the Prius automobile. However, in spite of questionable management the U.S. cannot afford to allow the auto and related industries to be flushed away. It is not in the interest of the American people. However, if large loans to the auto industry from the federal government are to be forthcoming they should be embedded with guidelines and requirements that are in the financial and environmental interests of America. It seems to me totally appropriate that accompanying any loans to the Big Three automakers should be the requirement that some of the existing members of the Board of Directors of the corporations be replaced with individuals responsible to the American government and the American people. This should be followed by an evaluation of the top management of GM, Ford and Chrysler. Chrysler is currently owned by a private equity firm but that should not preclude them from oversight if they want public loans. If America is to make major investments in these companies America should have some input as to who is managing the federal investments. The current management of the Big Three automakers does not elicit confidence.

* Are the French frank? - The latest hit to our national ego, at least the male members of the equation, comes from a study done by the Institute of Condom Consultancy. The study asked 10,500 men in 25 countries to measure their penis and enter the number into a database. The results show Frenchmen on average claim to need 15.48-cm (6.09-inch) long condoms, larger than any other group in the study. I personally am not upset by the study. I believe that size does not matter. Those damn Frenchmen! How does one say “liar, liar – pants on fire” in French?

* Get your own house in order – The word “catholic” may mean universal or all-embracing but the Catholic Church does not speak for everyone in the world. I defend any religion to believe what they want but I vehemently oppose one body of religion imposing its beliefs on non-members. A case in point: Every single country in the European Union has signed a resolution to be submitted to the United Nations calling on governments worldwide to de-criminalize homosexuality. Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the United Nations, told a French Catholic news service that the Vatican opposes such a U.N. resolution. Migliore claimed that the resolution “would create new and implacable discriminations” against opponents of same-sex marriage.” If anyone can tell me exactly what the Archbishop’s words mean, please send me an email. It sounds like an incoherent Bush statement using bigger words.

It is beyond me how so many religious leaders are blind to their own inhumanity while so subservient to their dogma. Perhaps if Catholic Church leaders spent more time being shepherds to their own flock, untold numbers of Catholics would not have been victimized by Catholic priest pedophiles. If the Catholic Church had expended as much effort removing these pedophiles from the church as they did covering up these criminal and morally bankrupt acts, the world would indeed be a better place. In the mean time, the Catholic Church should cease pontificating to the world about morality.

* Proposition 8 ~ The Musical – A reader sent a somewhat entertaining short video that stars some well-known entertainers. It satirizes the proponents of California’s Proposition 8 that overturned gay marriage. Unfortunately, where was this effort BEFORE the vote on Prop 8? Prop 8 was successful because those against gay marriage were better organized as well as better-funded, primarily by the resources of the Mormon Church (that has a “great” history of "traditional" marriage). At a time when progressive thinking helped bring Obama and many senators and representatives to office, proponents for gay union fell far short on the proposition that overturned the rights of gay marriage. I think that the courts will ultimately invalidate Prop 8 but it was a setback to the civil rights of the gay community. The social conservatives continue to teach us lessons on organization and framing the questions on social issues. We should begin paying more attention as to how the "professional" communicators do it.

* Aborting social conservative malarkey – Contrary to the propaganda disseminated by the religious-right, no high-quality study done to date can document that having an abortion causes psychological distress, or a "post-abortion syndrome." A team at John Hopkins University in Baltimore reviewed 21 studies involving more than 150,000 women and found that there are "no significant differences in long-term mental health between women who choose to abort a pregnancy and others." This has not stopped social conservatives from making the claim or even the Supreme Court from citing this unsubstantiated side effect of abortion in a recent deliberation. Those who believe in a women’s reproductive right to choice will have to do a better job informing the public than opponents are doing with misinformation.

* Derriere Orifice of the week ~ the entire U.S. Senate – One of the reasons that little gets accomplished in Washington is the arcane and convoluted rules under which the Senate (mis)functions. An excellent example of such rules is the one that allows blocking the confirmation of Neil Barofsky, nominated to oversee the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. The Senate rules allow any senator to anonymously put a hold on any nomination for any reason. Until Thursday, a Republican Senator was blocking this nomination. No one could argue the critical need for someone in authority to oversee how this humongous sum of money is spent. If Mr. Barofsky is not the right person for the job the Senate should determine that and move on to another nominee. To leave this important post unfilled is about as egregious as the lack of oversight of the financial industry that Congress permitted in the first place. One of the challenges confronting the well-being of our nation is to convince our elected representatives to change rules that paralyze government.

* Speaking of Derrieres ~ the star of Fox News is really the black hole of Faux News – Almost 2 years ago, January 2, 2007, an FBI report revealed details of Guantanamo torture tactics that included: "Captives at Guantánamo Bay were chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor for 18 hours or more, urinating and defecating on themselves.” Other unsavory details can be read at the above link – a must read for those macho warriors/saviors of the political right that took America down this morally bankrupt path. On December 1, 2008 – this week! - Bill O’Reilly said on his radio show, “There are accusations of mistreatment at Guantanamo, but there's certainly no proof that ever happened." Wishful thinking and incompetence dragged America into the Iraq and Guantanamo quagmires. The fantasies of the O’Reilly crowd preclude veracity, solution and resolution. Like the neocons and Bush ideologues, the right-wing media personalities deservedly are waving goodbye to any credibility they may have had at one time.

It is also interesting to note that a recent study by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes found that the more one watches FOX News the more likely it is that one’s perceptions about the Iraq war are wrong. A free society must accept neo-Nazis marching, the KKK parading and FOX News being Bush and Cheney’s political propagandists and the voice of hate and divisiveness. We do have the option of ignoring such air(wave) pollution.

* “Suppose you were an idiot.
And suppose you were a member of Congress....
But then I repeat myself.”
Mark Twain

* Obama and the Iraq war ~ an adult enters the discussion – On Tuesday Barak Obama gave a major speech about Iraq. He said, “George Bush and John McCain don't have a strategy for success in Iraq—they have a strategy for staying in Iraq. They said we couldn't leave when violence was up, they say we can't leave when violence is down. They refuse to press the Iraqis to make tough choices, and they label any timetable to redeploy our troops "surrender," even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government—not to a terrorist enemy. Theirs is an endless focus on tactics inside Iraq, with no consideration of our strategy to face threats beyond Iraq's borders.” A video and text of his speech are at this link.

Who thinks that the withdrawal of American troops should begin?
~ The American people. “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 59% of Americans want the troops brought home from Iraq within a year.” Would this number be over 90% if there was a military draft in this country?
~ A Pentagon-sponsored report soon to be released will recommend reducing troop levels from the current 150,000 to 50,000 by the spring of 2009.
~ The Iraqi Prime Minister, who advocates a withdrawal timetable of U.S. troops.
~ Maybe President Bush? He has always been against a “timetable” for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. However, this week we began hearing the word “horizon” in place of timetable from the Bush administration. I say shame on those who have accused the president of lacking a sophisticated command of the English language. And speaking of “horizon”, we can almost see January 20, 2009.

As much as the Bush administration has pushed for a long-term agreement with Iraq to keep large numbers of U.S. troops in the country, negotiations with Iraq have broken down. “U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have abandoned efforts to conclude a comprehensive agreement governing the long-term status of U.S troops in Iraq before the end of the Bush presidency… The failure of months of negotiations over the more detailed accord -- blamed on both the Iraqi refusal to accept U.S. terms and the complexity of the task -- deals a blow to the Bush administration's plans to leave in place a formal military architecture in Iraq that could last for years.” Could it be that the only ones that do want our troops to remain in Iraq on a large scale are the U.S. defense supply industry, Big Oil interests and the neocon nimcompoops that initiated this tragic war?

* News Flash ~ the Iraq war must be over – In a May 2008 interview President Bush revealed a personal way in which he has tried to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families: He has given up golf. “I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.” For not the first time Bush has fallen off the wagon or golf cart or changed his story or backtracked or altered the truth when alteration he finds. On July 21st the president will be at the Cape Arundel Golf Course in Kennebunkport, Maine to meet and greet $5000 donors to the McCain campaign. It appears that extending his presidency through McCain trumped the mothers grieving for their fallen sons. Since it is not likely that many of these high-roller golfers have children that served in Iraq the president will not be facing grieving parents. When George W. yells “fore” will he really mean “for” or “four” or “fjord”? Sometimes it is just so difficult to know what the president means. I imagine that he has the same problem.

* A note to anyone considering voting for an incumbent Republican or the continuation of the Bush presidency through John McCain ~ another excerpt from Obama’s speech this week – “Imagine, for a moment, what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11. ... We could have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in alternative sources of energy to grow our economy, save our planet, and end the tyranny of oil. ... Instead, we have lost thousands of American lives, spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats – all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.” Recall that during the early years of the Iraq war a Republican controlled congress enabled Bush to proceed unimpeded and blocked any attempts to question or investigate war policy or torture policy or domestic policy. They quickly spent the surplus left by Clinton and created a deficit that will burden subsequent generations. Recall the policies that ignored global warming, destroyed the value of the dollar, did nothing to prevent the mortgage crisis, enhanced the growth of terrorism, and did nothing about healthcare costs. As much as McCain wants to separate himself from Bush a look at McCain’s voting record is telling. In 2007 he voted with Bush 95% of the time and in 2008 100% of the time. The only ones closer to Bush than McCain are Laura and Barney.

* LOOK OUT, they are everywhere ~ seeing the trees through the forest – The U.S. Terrorist Watch List has now reached 1,000,000 names. Unwieldy, undocumented and impossible to implement would describe the Bush administration’s approach to ensuring that terrorists do not enter the country while listing untold numbers of innocent individuals as threats. Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program said, "Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning." The ACLU provides a Watch List counter and stories of innocents who have been burdened by being on the list such as Noble Peace prize winner Nelson Mandela, President of Bolivia Evo Morales, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy, U.S. Representative John Lewis, the wife of Senator Ted Stevens and six-year old John William Anderson. Extensive research allowed me to identify the management principle being used by Homeland Security: throw enough crap against the wall and some of it will stick.

* Quote of the Week ~ the nadir of tongue-tied erudition – South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is considered a strong candidate to be John McCain’s vice president. Appearing on CNN, Wolf Blitzer asked Sanford, "Are there any significant economic differences between what the Bush administration has put forward, over these many years, as opposed to, now, what John McCain supports?" Sanford’s response: "Yes. I mean, for instance, take, you know -- take, for instance, the issue of -- I'm drawing a blank, and I hate it when I do that, particularly on television." I guess that Gov. Sanford realizes that McCain’s economic plan matches and is as flawed as Bush’s. The Center for American Progress looks at McCain’s economic plan and finds little to admire. More tax cuts for the wealthy and the private sector unimpeded. Does this remind you of the policies that resulted in our current economic crisis?

* IIW ~ Ignoble Ignoramus of the Week – I am on record as being quite critical of President Bush’s Attorney Generals. The more we learn about them the less there is to like. This week John Ashcroft appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on Interrogation to testify about interrogation methods used at Guantanamo. In his opening statement, Ashcroft admitted that he had "limited recollection" of the events pertinent to the committee's inquiry. Specifically, "it's been difficult . . . to distinguish between what I in fact recall as a matter of my own experience, and what I remember from the accounts of others." Perhaps it behooves future presidents to appoint an Attorney General that has more intelligence than a bowl of guacamole and more integrity than a hacked chicken and bean burrito.

* “Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will.”
John D. MacDonald (1916 – 1986) an American writer of crime and suspense novels