Friday, July 18, 2003
Going backwards
The Ford Motor Company's sport utility vehicles will be less fuel-efficient in the 2003 model year than the previous year, the company said in a new report.
Earlier this year, the company said it could not meet a pledge to raise the fuel economy of its sport utility vehicles by 25 percent from 2000 to 2005. But the report indicates that Ford is actually moving backwards in its S.U.V. fuel economy.
In the 2002 model year, the company's sport utility vehicles were 8.4 percent more efficient than the vehicles the company made in the 2000 model year. But the S.U.V.'s produced this year are only 5.2 percent more efficient than those made in the 2000 model year, according to the company's corporate citizenship report.
Have you driven an inefficient Ford lately?
posted by chris at 2:58 PM
Straight to the Outbox
Under a system deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week, those who want to send a message to President Bush must now navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts by asking whether the message sender supports White House policy or differs with it.
Completing a message to the president also requires choosing a subject from the provided list, then entering a full name, organization, address and e-mail address. Once the message is sent, the writer must wait for an automated response to the e-mail address listed, asking whether the addressee intended to send the message. The message is delivered to the White House only after the person using that e-mail address confirms it.
Jimmy Orr, a White House spokesman, described the system as an "enhancement" intended to improve communications. He called it a "work in progress," and advised members of the public who had sensitive or personal matters to bring up with President Bush to use traditional methods of communications, like a letter on paper, a fax or a phone call.
The White House - We Just Don't Want to Hear About It.
posted by chris at 11:26 AM
Better than Fox News
Okay, so maybe I'm late in the game, cause I don't have a TV . . . BUT, after rolling thru the website, I have to say that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is FRIGGIN' GENIUS!!! They drop more knowledge in 60 seconds than any of the other news channels do in a half hour or an hour or however long they're droning on and on about nothing important. The Daily Show is unbelievable. I'm currently obsessed with it, but that shouldn't dissuade you from checking it out. You don't really know what's going on in the world until you watch it.
Update: Check out the Bush vs. Bush debate. This kinda stuff should be all over the mainstream press, but it's not. You have to go to Comedy Central to get the real story. Sad, but oh so funny!
posted by chris at 1:57 AM
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Thursday, July 17, 2003
Revisionist history
Just in case you didn't see this . . .
Defending the broader decision to go to war with Iraq, the president said the decision was made after he gave Saddam Hussein "a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."
The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective.
That's a nice way of putting it. After all the screaming about "revisionist historians" trying to rewrite what happened during the attack on Iraq, Bush is doing the same damn thing. Trying to muddy the waters so no one can see clearly what actually happened. It's a clever trick - taking advantage of the public's collective short-term memory. But it's more lies, more deceit, more falsehoods. And we shouldn't let ourselves fall for it.
posted by chris at 5:22 PM
The dangerous world of children
Geov Parrish has a hilarous rant about the Bush administration, comparing them to spoiled little children.
The result is calamity almost beyond words to describe: an appetite for cool comic-book foreign policy, emphasis on blowing stuff up, combined with a Never-Never Land insistence on how the world works and economics learned from watching older siblings play Monopoly.
Little kids, you'll recall, can be incredibly cruel. And so it is in D.C. these days, a dramatic step down from the last depressing administration, where the Clinton crew (including, no doubt, Janet Reno) had at least discovered girls. This collection hasn't even matured enough yet to learn right from wrong, or that actions have consequences, or even to experience the essential step in human development of understanding that the world doesn't start and stop with them, that other people think and act and feel just like they do. Empathy. Instead, this bunch stays at home, watches TV, and plays army all day. It's a nice day; they should at least go outside and play. Clinton needed to be grounded. Junior needs to have his toys taken away.
Mine! All mine!
posted by chris at 2:19 PM
Pat Robertson takes credit for fall of Soviet Union
I prayed for the downfall of the Soviet Union. I thought that communism, the tyranny of communism, was an abomination and I beseeched God to bring that terrible evil down and he did. It was a great triumph, it took awhile, but it happened.
Pat's latest prayer crusade is to get 3 Supreme Court Justices off the bench, so "more conservative" justices can be appointed.
One justice is 83 years old, another has cancer, and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire? . . . . Please join us in prayer to support a massive prayer offensive that we are going to call Operation Supreme Court Freedom.
Okaaaayyy . . . I was actually really worried as I was reading that second quote. I thought for sure that the next words after "Would it not be possible for God to . . ." were going to be "smite them down in all His wrath." But thankfully, Pat's just calling for their retirement, not for a Heavenly hit to be put out on them.
posted by chris at 2:04 PM
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Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Smoke and mirrors revealed to be dirty clouds and broken glass
In recent days, as the Bush administration has defended its assertion in the president's State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to buy African uranium, officials have said it was only one bit of intelligence that indicated former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program.
But a review of speeches and reports, plus interviews with present and former administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28, when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N. inspectors in Iraq.
By Jan. 28, in fact, the intelligence report concerning Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa -- although now almost entirely disproved -- was the only publicly unchallenged element of the administration's case that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. That may explain why the administration strived to keep the information in the speech and attribute it to the British, even though the CIA had challenged it earlier.
Much more.
posted by chris at 11:24 AM
The other Africa
Presidential trips overseas are always whirlwind affairs that leave the leader with snapshots, but in Africa, so vast and varied a place, capturing real life is especially difficult. But if everyday Nigerians encountered along Mr. Bush's route had been in charge of the presidential schedule, he might have come a lot closer.
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In the decidedly grittier world most Nigerians inhabit, the president would eat delicacies from the street, things like goat head and pounded yam, and he would quench his thirst with water that did not come from a bottle, or even a tap. If there was time, he might fetch that water himself, balancing a plastic jug on his head, to get an idea of how so many African women start their days.
He would also spend time out of the big cities, since most Africans live in rural areas. He would be stopped at a checkpoint deep in the bush by children with guns.
But not everything would be so grim. Some slum dwellers in this sprawling city said they would give him palm wine and keep him out late at a music joint. And he would have seen, after waking up from a night's sleep on a straw mat laid out in the corner of some small hut, his arms and legs covered with mosquito bites, that Africans are a hardy lot.
"Somebody like him doesn't understand sufficiently what we go through every day," said a man who identified himself as Sheik Muhammad, and who said he would gladly serve as Mr. Bush's tour guide, especially since he has no job.
Ahh, Africa . . .
posted by chris at 11:15 AM
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Monday, July 14, 2003
Sir Links-alot
Just added a bucket full of new links to the Links page. I still need to organize that page a bit, so it looks all purty and stuff, but for now, there's tons of new sites to check out. Enjoy.
posted by chris at 8:47 PM
Who needs plans?
Pentagon planners failed to develop detailed plans for postwar Iraq because they were convinced Iraqis would welcome US troops and that a hand-picked exile leader would replace Saddam Hussein and impose order.
The exclusive report in Knight Ridder Newspapers quoted more than a dozen current and former senior government officials, many of whom linked a lack of US planning to the current chaos in Iraq.
"There was no real planning for postwar Iraq," said one former senior official. Most of those interviewed requested anonymity.
Civilian planners at the Pentagon's secretive Office of Special Plans hoped to transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the oil trade in the region and encircle Iran with US friends and allies, the report said.
It's not a quagmire.
posted by chris at 2:35 PM
Top Ten Lists
The Independent has compiled a list of the Top 20 Lies about the attack on Iraq. Alternet has compiled one too, but they've only got Ten. Good information to pass around to others.
posted by chris at 1:38 PM
Mmmm . . . pork . . .
Congress's $400 billion Medicare prescription drug bill, advertised as a way to help elderly Americans pay for their medicine, has become a magnet for dozens of unrelated provisions benefiting hospitals, doctors, medical equipment companies and an array of other health care interests.
Tucked into the small print of the 1,043-page Senate version, for example, is a "demonstration project" allowing selected chiropractors to bill Medicare for many services not now covered. If the experiment shows that chiropractors can save money for Medicare by steering patients away from costlier services, it could be instituted nationwide.
Other provisions -- many of them dropped into the legislation in the small hours of June 27, just before Senate passage -- would benefit marriage counselors, the weight-management industry, rural ambulance services, Hawaii's Medicaid program and doctors in Alaska.
. . . Proposed changes in the basic Medicare program now consume about 200 pages in the Senate bill, one-fifth of the total. Preliminary estimates suggest the special provisions will add tens of billions of dollars to the legislation's cost, although Republicans say the bills also contain offsetting savings.
Bacon, sausage, ham . . .
posted by chris at 11:12 AM
Setting up the buffer zone
A group of 25 Iraqis from diverse political, ethnic and religious backgrounds stepped onto a stage and declared themselves a "governing council" today, taking the first step to define the country's political future by accepting an offer of limited power-sharing from the U.S.-led occupation authority.
The members -- who include former exiles, politicians, Muslim clerics, tribal leaders, social activists, physicians and lawyers -- were selected by the occupation authority to help run this country of 24 million people until sovereignty is handed over to an elected government. The council's responsibilities will include the operation of ministries, the appointment of diplomats, the approval of next year's budget and preliminary work to form a commission to draft a constitution. Final control over those issues will still rest with the U.S. administrator here, L. Paul Bremer, but he has said he will follow the council's decisions in all but the most extraordinary circumstances.
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They expect the council to appease Iraqi political leaders, who have been clamoring for a chance to govern, as well as citizens, who have called for a greater role for Iraqis in the postwar transition. U.S. officials also say they believe that putting responsibility for government operations on the council could help deflect public anger over the tardy resumption of basic services from the occupation authority.
So now all the blame for the crippled reconstruction of Iraq can be placed on the shoulders of the council. Nice. Story here.
posted by chris at 10:49 AM
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Sunday, July 13, 2003
Conflicting information
George Tenet took the fall for the inclusion of the Niger uranium information in Bush's State of the Union address, but a new report by the Washington Post seems to contradict that.
CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials.
Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it came from only a single source, according to one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged.
The new disclosure suggests how eager the White House was in January to make Iraq's nuclear program a part of its case against Saddam Hussein even in the face of earlier objections by its own CIA director. It also appears to raise questions about the administration's explanation of how the faulty allegations were included in the State of the Union speech.
posted by chris at 5:05 PM
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