Now that’s a headline you don’t want to see if your name happens to be Bennett. But it’s no relation: Ousted Refco Inc. Chief Executive Phillip R. Bennett was charged with securities fraud in connection with hiding hundreds of millions of dollars from investors who bought stock in the future-trading firm’s initial public offering. Finding … Continue reading “Bennett indicted”
Now that’s a headline you don’t want to see if your name happens to be Bennett. But it’s no relation:
Ousted Refco Inc. Chief Executive Phillip R. Bennett was charged with securities fraud in connection with hiding hundreds of millions of dollars from investors who bought stock in the future-trading firm’s initial public offering.
Finding out you’d been indicted by reading the WSJ would be a real pisser.
The controversy over Harriet Miers continues, with the Administration desperately trying to shore up support among both moderates like Arlen Specter and conservatives like the Bible crowd and the “victims of liberalism” crowd: In that conversation, which has been the subject of feverish speculation, Rove also told Dobson that one reason the president was passing … Continue reading “The New Litmus Test”
The controversy over Harriet Miers continues, with the Administration desperately trying to shore up support among both moderates like Arlen Specter and conservatives like the Bible crowd and the “victims of liberalism” crowd:
In that conversation, which has been the subject of feverish speculation, Rove also told Dobson that one reason the president was passing over better-known conservatives was that many on the White House short list had asked not to be considered, Dobson said, according to an advance transcript of the broadcast provided by his organization, Focus on the Family.
Blogosphere luminaries Jeff Goldstein and John Cole face down over Bush’s motivation and come to no conclusion.
OK, I have a theory about Miers that I haven’t seen anywhere, so I’m going to throw it out even though it’s raw speculation with nothing to back it up except trace elements of DNA found near the crime scene. Here we go.
Bush doesn’t care about abortion, and neither do the bibliocons. They understand that even if the Supreme Court was to strike down Roe, the states would legalize it anyway, and they’d lose their moral authority. It’s one thing to say that five men in black robes are imposing their personal views on you, and quite another to be faced with the certain knowledge that the people hold values that define you as outside the mainstream. So it’s best if Roe stays intact and the conservative movement has the issue to complain about.
The real problem that bibliocons have with the court showed up earlier this year in the great shouting match over the corpse of Terri Schiavo. All along the bibliocons and paleocons had been telling us they were fed-up with activist judges getting involved in state and local issues where they didn’t belong, but suddenly they were all over the courts for refusing to be activist with respect to the family and the State of Florida. So it became clear that the right wants the mirror image of what the left wants, an activist bench that is willing to impose its personal values and beliefs on the rest of us.
Looking for judges who have that sort of orientation is a hard search, because the conservative team that the right’s been grooming since Roe (Luttig, McConnell, Olsen, et. al.) is all about judicial restraint, and none of them can be relied upon to jump into the breech on Schiavo-type cases and do the right thing by the right. So Bush had to ignore the conservative farm team and draft a close personal friend with the proper religious credentials and the requisite lack of judicial hang-ups.
So that’s why we have Miers, to make the far right wing of the Right-to-Life conservative movement less ineffectual the next time we have a case before the courts involving a corpse on life-support.
Put yourself in Bush’s shoes: his approval ratings started going down when he flew to Washington to sign the Schiavo bill, and they’ve never recovered. The press pounced on him over Katrina because he made himself vulnerable, and they’re not letting up.
And this isn’t a cynical move orchestrated by Rove, it’s George W. Bush being sincere. And sincerely stupid.
There you are.
UPDATE: See some discussion of this theory at Cathy Young, Jeff Goldstein, John Cole, and Doc Searls. Cathy thinks I’m wrong, citing Judge Greer as an example of a good religious judge, but she misses the fact that religiosity isn’t a monolith: Miers is a born-again, while Greer is just a garden-variety Southern Baptist who was expelled from his church for sticking by the law. As she’s a born-again with no demonstrated commitment to the rule of law, I don’t see Miers as another Greer. In fact, I’d much rather see Greer on the court than Miers.
The latest excuse for the Katrina media riot is all about race: Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part. “If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white … Continue reading “Dem coloreds shaw be crazy”
The latest excuse for the Katrina media riot is all about race:
Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.
“If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people,” Amoss said, “it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering.”
As I live in a part of country bereft of black people (Pacific Northwest) I can’t comment on this except to say it strikes me as rather remarkable. I mean, this guy works for a newspaper that can’t tell what’s happening right before its eyes, yet he feels competent to analyze an alternate reality that doesn’t even exist?
Oh, I forgot, “facts are commodities, we want lessons to live by.”
Will we ever run out of oil? Probably not, but that’s not necessarily a source of comfort: Will the world ever physically run out of crude oil? No, but only because it will eventually become very expensive in absence of lower-cost alternatives. When will worldwide production of conventionally reservoired crude oil peak? That will in … Continue reading “World Oil Supply”
Will we ever run out of oil? Probably not, but that’s not necessarily a source of comfort:
Will the world ever physically run out of crude oil? No, but only because it will eventually become very expensive in absence of lower-cost alternatives. When will worldwide production of conventionally reservoired crude oil peak? That will in part depend on the rate of demand growth, which is subject to reduction via both technological advancements in petroleum product usage such as hybrid-powered automobiles and the substitution of new energy source technologies such as hydrogen-fed fuel cells where the hydrogen is obtained, for example, from natural gas, other hydrogen-rich organic compounds, or electrolysis of water. It will also depend in part on the rate at which technological advancement, operating in concert with world oil market economics, accelerates large-scale development of unconventional sources of crude such as tar sands and very heavy oils. Production from some of the Canadian tar sands and Venezuelan heavy oil deposits is already economic and growing.
In any event, the world production peak for conventionally reservoired crude is unlikely to be “right around the corner” as so many other estimators have been predicting. Our analysis shows that it will be closer to the middle of the 21st century than to its beginning. Given the long lead times required for significant mass-market penetration of new energy technologies, this result in no way justifpenetration of new energy technologies, this result in no way justifies complacency about both supply-side and demand-side research and development.
Get humping.
Big government certainly failed in New Orleans: the levees weren’t in good shape, the evacuation was a disaster, the Red Cross was not permitted to feed the hungry, and FEMA didn’t perform the miracle of driving upon water. But there were some little-heralded successes that have escaped the notice of our rioting media establishment: Meanwhile … Continue reading “Little government worked”
Big government certainly failed in New Orleans: the levees weren’t in good shape, the evacuation was a disaster, the Red Cross was not permitted to feed the hungry, and FEMA didn’t perform the miracle of driving upon water. But there were some little-heralded successes that have escaped the notice of our rioting media establishment:
Meanwhile the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, claimed 20,000 rescues by Sept. 8 at which point it suspended calls for more volunteers and boats. While it is unclear how many of these rescues took place in the critical time frame, the only mention of this staggering achievement came in the Sept. 8 press release. How many national reporters thought to call the Wildlife department, or even thought it was a go-to agency?
By the time these stories come out, will the people still be paying attention?
Check this video of ABC News reporter Dean Reynolds trying to solicit Bush-bashing from a (black) New Orleans resident and getting totally shut down. This is media bias, pure and simple.
Check this video of ABC News reporter Dean Reynolds trying to solicit Bush-bashing from a (black) New Orleans resident and getting totally shut down.
This is media bias, pure and simple.
The real story of Katrina is the mainstream media riot: What is the real story of Katrina is (I suggest) not so much that nature wrought fury on land, water, people, property, and animals, not at all anything about racism, not much about federal government incompetence. The real story is that the mainstream media rioted. … Continue reading “Rioting in New Orleans”
The real story of Katrina is the mainstream media riot:
What is the real story of Katrina is (I suggest) not so much that nature wrought fury on land, water, people, property, and animals, not at all anything about racism, not much about federal government incompetence. The real story is that the mainstream media rioted.
They used the storm and its attendant sorrows to continue their endless attack on George W. Bush. Wildly inflated stories about the number of dead and missing, totally made up old wives’ tales of racism, breathless accounts of Bush’s neglect that are utterly devoid of truth and of historical context — this is what the mainstream media gave us. The use of floating corpses, of horror stories of plagues, the sad faces of refugees, the long-faced phony accusations of intentional neglect and racism — anything is grist for the media’s endless attempts to undermine the electorate’s choice last November. It is sad, but true that the media will use even the most heart breaking truths — and then add total inventions — to try to weaken and then evict from office a man who has done nothing wrong, but has instead turned himself inside out to help the real victims.
Let’s hope this narrative replaces the official one in the days to come.
See related observations by Jeff Goldstein, Jim Pinkerton, John Cole, and Knoxville’s answer to Lewis and Clark professor Jack Bogdanski, Glenn Reynolds.
Jeff Goldstein tells the truth about Katrina coverage, and Kevin Drum lies like a rug. The national shame regarding Katrina begins with local government in Louisiana and ends with the shoddiest journalism I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Jeff Goldstein tells the truth about Katrina coverage, and Kevin Drum lies like a rug.
The national shame regarding Katrina begins with local government in Louisiana and ends with the shoddiest journalism I’ve seen in my lifetime.
Greg Gutfeld can be so mean to the wankers.
Greg Gutfeld can be so mean to the wankers.
Some people think Cindy Sheehan is America’s Mom, and some think she’s daffy as a duck. She lays it all out here: Well, George and I are leaving Crawford today. George is finished playing golf and telling his fables in San Diego, so he will be heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his … Continue reading “Cindy Sheehan explains hurricanes”
Some people think Cindy Sheehan is America’s Mom, and some think she’s daffy as a duck. She lays it all out here:
Well, George and I are leaving Crawford today. George is finished playing golf and telling his fables in San Diego, so he will be heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing policies have caused. Recovery would be easier and much quicker if almost ½ of the three states involved National Guard were not in Iraq. All of the National Guard’s equipment is in Iraq, also. Plus, with the 2 billion dollars a week that the private contractors are siphoning from our treasury, how are we going to pay for helping our own citizens in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama? And, should I dare say “global warming?” and be branded as a “conspiracy theorist” on top of everything else the right-wingers say about me.
Sheehan’s not alone in politicizing this tragedy: it’s almost a cottage industry by now.
