Of the top 10 states for poverty, 6 are “Right-to-Work” (union busting) states.

Of the top 10 states for hunger, 7 are “Right-to-Work” states.

That should say it all, but the fact that Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby (Alabama - ranked 6th for poverty) are arguing against good union jobs that raise wages across the industry also tells you all you need to know about the divide between the the haves and have-nots in these “Right-to-Work” states: only it’s who has representation in Congress, and who only gets lip service (or worse).

While slavery might be dead in the South, employers below the Mason-Dixon still hanker for the lost riches that abundant free labor used to provide. They drive down wages by threatening - or actually - shipping jobs overseas, and by pitting whites against minorities to insure that labor solidarity is all but impossible.

Case in point:

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R- Ala., told reporters Wednesday, “I can not imagine a real justification for a worker in Alabama who does not have any health insurance at his company to be taxed to maintain a Cadillac health care plan for somebody in Detroit.”

Sen. Sessions, when is the last time you supported a bill for universal healthcare that would help out your constituents?

And when is the last time you addressed poverty in your state?

Yes, the Big 3 have been top-heavy and unresponsive to actual market conditions for ages. But we have a chance now not only to save about 3,000,000 jobs (at a time when unemployment is at its highest in 16 years) but to demand concessions from the executives - instead of the workers - that could re-make these critical manufacturers at a time when nothing matters more than creating jobs and improving wages.

Oh, and Sen. Sessions: any bailout to the auto industry would be a loan, not a grant, so chances are your poor and hungry constituents, if they even make enough to pay taxes, won’t be out a dime. And neither will the rich, white employers who bought you that seat.

My job in Portland, Oregon depends on exported raw materials coming back into the U.S. as auto glass. The bottom line is that none of us, from the UAW members in Detriot to me to even those Honda workers in Alabama, cannot afford for the country to lose 3 million manufacturing jobs. Demand in this country for everything from hibachis to Hondas would fall so low as to drive us to the edge of a Depression that could last a decade or more (unless we decided another war was the way out).

Peace and prosperity is what Americans want now, Sen. Sessions. Instead of being part of the problem, why don’t you shut up and get to work on some solutions?

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Perle in September, 2003:

And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation.

Bush did get his Square in Baghdad after all, but perhaps not as Perle imagined:

BAGHDAD (AP) — Followers of a Shiite cleric on Friday stomped on and burned an effigy of President George W. Bush in the same central Baghdad square where Iraqis beat a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein with their sandals five years earlier.

Chanting and waving flags, thousands of Muqtada al-Sadr’s followers filled Firdous Square to protest a proposed U.S.-Iraqi security pact that would allow American troops to stay for three more years. The Bush effigy was placed on the same pedestal where U.S. Marines toppled the ousted dictator’s statue in one of the iconic images of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

After a mass prayer, demonstrators pelted the effigy with plastic water bottles and sandals. One man hit it in the face with his sandal. The effigy fell head first into the crowd and protesters jumped on it before setting it ablaze.

Before it fell, the effigy held a sign that said: “The security agreement … shame and humiliation.”

I can think of no better memorial to Bush’s War.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year’s sharp economic downturn, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department’s annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than double the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn’t have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.
…
“There’s every reason to think the increases in the number of hungry people will be very, very large based on the increased demand we’re seeing this year at food stamp agencies, emergency kitchens, Women, Infants and Children clinics, really across the entire social service support structure,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

Weill said the figures show that economic growth during the first seven years of the Bush administration didn’t reach the poorest and hungriest people. “The people in the deepest poverty are suffering the most,” Weill said.

This is disgraceful, to say the least. We’re spending trillions between Iraq and Afghanistan and the bank robbery-cum-bailout, but we can’t manage to keep our populace from hunger - one of the hallmarks of a “first-world” country.

As Rachel Maddow has so often said, we are Birkina Fasso with cable.

When the Walk & Knock bag comes in your Columbian in the next few weeks, please fill it up with canned & boxed goods (if you can - these are tough times, I know), and remember to leave it outside by 8am on December 6th. If you don’t subscribe to the Columbian, please mark the date on your calendar and use any old bag. (Almost all neighborhoods in Clark County will be covered by Walk & Knock teams.)

You can find more information and volunteer for the Walk & Knock and prep activities before December 6th here.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

shouldn’t we be able to do it in Washington, D.C.?

A Texas grand jury has issued indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former attorney general Alberto Gonzalez over abuse at privately run prisons, court documents showed.

The three-page indictment Tuesday alleges that Cheney profited from the abuse because he invested 85 million dollars in a mutual fund company which holds shares of for-profit prisons.

It said this is a “direct conflict of interest” because Cheney had influence over the federal contracts awarded to the prison companies.

The indictment also accused Cheney of committing “at least misdemeanor assaults” of inmates by allowing other inmates to assault them.

The indictment further alleges that Gonzalez “participated by further having used his position … to stop the investigations as to the wrong doings which includes the assaults committed in the prison for profit in Willacy County, Texas.”

Cheney and Gonzalez were charged with engaging in organized criminal activity.

Music to my ears.

I know what Obama said, that prosecutions for torture are not on his to-do list. But to say otherwise while Bush still has the power to pardon everyone in his whole goddamn administration would be stupid. And he said nothing about war crimes, which would include, of course, the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

If Obama fails to bring justice for the 1,000,000 Iraqis who have died as a result of BushCo’s murderous gambit, we’ll just have to make sure that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfled, Gonzales et al. take a vacation in one of the many countries that are parties to the Geneva Conventions.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

1 Comments

• At November 21, 2008, John wrote:

  This case will be dismissed before it ever begins.

  http://www.kansascity.com/440/story/902091.html

  None of the Bush crime family will ever be convicted of anything IMO unless of course they catch one of them with their pants down (literally speaking) with the wrong person before they leave office. Psychopaths are experts at "getting away with murder".

The $700 Billion Dollar Man gave a report on the progress of the “TARP” program this morning, and unsurprisingly the benefits are all going to the banks, while the individuals who are in debt to those same banks get bupkis. If you’ve ever seen the movie House of Games (or even The Sting), you’ll have a good roadmap to Paulson’s signature moves.

Start with that time-honored con, the Bait and Switch:

We asked for $700 billion to purchase troubled assets from financial institutions. At the time, we believed that would be the most effective means of getting credit flowing again.

During the two weeks that Congress considered the legislation, market conditions worsened considerably. It was clear to me by the time the bill was signed on October 3rd that we needed to act quickly and forcefully, and that purchasing troubled assets - our initial focus - would take time to implement and would not be sufficient given the severity of the problem… I determined that the most timely, effective step to improve credit market conditions was to strengthen bank balance sheets quickly through direct purchases of equity in banks.

Next, make the beneficiaries (in truth, your partners-in-crime) seem like a tough sell; this is a variant on the con-man’s trust-aversion gambit:

As we planned a capital purchase plan to support the overall financial system by strengthening balance sheets of a broad array of healthy banks, the terms had to be designed to encourage broad participation, balanced to ensure appropriate taxpayer protection and not impede the flow of private capital.

Then, hype your success at getting these hard-sells to participate in the program, without letting the mark ever sense that it was easy:

By October 26th we had $115 billion out the door to eight large institutions. In Washington that is a land-speed record from announcing a program to getting funds out the door. We now have approved dozens of additional applications, …[but] it will take time to complete legal contracts and execute investments in the significant number of institutions who meet the eligibility requirements and are approved…

Keep the pressure on to make sure no one gets the troublesome idea of clapping eyes on what you’re doing:

During times like these with a slowing economy and some deterioration in credit conditions, even the healthiest banks tend to become more risk-averse and restrain lending, and regulators’ actions have reinforced this lending restraint in the past. With a stronger capital base, our banks will be more confident and better positioned to play their necessary role to support economic activity.

Mix up news of your successes with mentions of probable failures to make your mark think throwing good money after bad is all part of the program, and that we’re on the right track:

First and foremost, because the system remains fragile, we must continue to stand ready to prevent systemic failures. That is the basis for Monday’s action to purchase preferred shares in AIG. The stability of our system remains the highest priority.

…The injection of up to $250 billion of capital into individual banks, the FDIC’s temporary guarantee of bank debt and the Federal Reserve’s multiple liquidity facilities for banks, money funds and commercial paper issuers have all significantly enhanced liquidity and helped improve market conditions.

While your mark is absorbing this avalanche of information, throw out another “must do” project that the mark would have never approved at the beginning, and push him over the brink and into the mindset that he’s put too much up already to stop now:

Second, the important markets for securitizing credit outside of the banking system also need support. Approximately 40 percent of U.S. consumer credit is provided through securitization of credit card receivables, auto loans and student loans and similar products. This market, which is vital for lending and growth, has for all practical purposes ground to a halt. Addressing these two priorities will have powerful impacts on the overall financial system, the strength of our financial institutions and the availability of consumer credit.

(Here you also neglect to tell the mark the obvious, that the U.S. consumers’ capacity to service all of the nation’s consumer debt has long since exceeded its limit.)

Finally, explain why it’s strictly necessary to help all of your associates, but never the mark’s associates or friends:

Over these past weeks we have continued to examine the relative benefits of purchasing illiquid mortgage-related assets. Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use TARP funds, but we will continue to examine whether targeted forms of asset purchase can play a useful role, relative to other potential uses of TARP resources, in helping to strengthen our financial system and support lending.

Our only hope is that Obama, being from Chicago, has seen this con game run before, and will shut it down - that is, if Congress manages to get through its lame duck session without approving the release of the final $350 billion. (Bush’s release of the second $100 billion is a given at this point; he’s got nothing to lose, and his and Cheney’s buddies in the banking sector have everything to gain.)

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

The CIA can hide statements from imprisoned suspected terrorists that the agency tortured them in its set of secret prisons, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the Washington D.C. Circuit Court declined to review the government’s assertions that the allegations of torture from men held in the CIA’s black site prisons — whether truthful or not — would put the nation at risk of grave danger if allowed to be made public.

“The Court, giving deference to the agency’s detailed, good-faith declaration, is disinclined to second-guess the agency in its area of expertise through in camera review,” Lamberth wrote, referring to a procedure where a judge looks at evidence in his chamber without showing it to the opposing side.

So the CIA says it doesn’t torture, and despite evidence to the contrary this judge depends on the Agency’s “good-faith declaration” and won’t even look at the detainees’ assertions of torture to determine if the CIA had a bona fide National Security claim (which one has to assume could not be based on the security implications of revealing of torture techniques, since torture is illegal).

But the CIA also says the detainees are lying about torture, so why not allow the release of at least the lies? How does that hurt national security? How can lies (at least detainees’ lies) be a matter of national security that needs to be classified?

The CIA made a point of noting that some of the allegations of torture were untrue, but had to be redacted anyways, because blacking out the truth and allowing false statements would let a clever prisoner paint an inverse picture of CIA torture techniques.

Judge Lamberth deferred to that argument.

“Improbable though this might seem, it is conceivable,” Lamberth wrote.

So a detainee is going to lie about torture techniques in such a way that future terrorist detainees can get a hold of the ACLU report, before they’re captured, and tell by the “untrue” reports of torture techniques what the actual enhanced interrogation techniques are used, and then steel themselves against those techniques?

The CIA obviously thinks we’re all as stupid as Sarah Palin.

Least surprising of all the above:

Judge Lamberth also served as the presiding judge of the nation’s secret spying [FISA] court from 1995 to 2002. He was reportedly the first judge to learn that the Administration was spying on Americans without following the law, but says there’s nothing to worry about.

We are so full of shit as a country it’s a wonder the rest of the world doesn’t band together to eliminate the stench.

We can’t stop working on November 5. We have to push Obama to redeem this country by reversing BushCo’s cynical and devastating culture of torture, lies and secrecy.

Approving all FOIA requests related to torture, black sites and illegal wire taps during the last 8 years would be a great place to start. What do you think, Senator Leahy?

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Here’s a riddle for you:

What can expand market share for cable, internet and satellite TV providers without costing them a dime while reducing the information (including emergency broadcasts) available to lower income and rural folks, increase our trade deficit, and potentially move emergency services from standard free radio communication to purchasing their radio services from one of the telecoms?

Why, the switch to digital TV, of course!

Starting Feb. 18, 2009, millions of televisions in American households will go black unless they’re outfitted to receive all-digital broadcasts.
…
The 2009 deadline will not affect the vast majority of Americans who already subscribe to cable or satellite TV. But households relying on an antenna to receive “over-the-air” analog broadcasts must acquire a digital tuner to continue receiving TV shows.

…[A] 1997 law stipulated that analog television would have be cut off on Dec. 31, 2006, or when 85 percent of households are capable of receiving digital signals, whichever arrived sooner. A slice of that spectrum would be handed over to police, fire, ambulance and other public safety responders who rely on the analog spectrum to communicate.
…
FCC rules require[d] all television sets and other TV receivers on the market to contain digital tuners by March 1, 2007.

In short, only those who continue to rely solely on over-the-air broadcast stations should have to make adjustments. Short of buying a new digital-ready television, they can opt for a digital-to-analog converter box, which manufacturers estimate will cost about $50 by 2009.

According to Nielsen, “In all, one in five U.S. households are either partially or completely unready for the government-mandated switch to digital programming that will occur on February 17, 2009.”

We aren’t one of those families - we got our converter box, and now receive an even crappier picture than we did with our old analog rabbit ears. And oftentimes, we get no signal at all. Most nights we can’t watch NBC (though we can in the morning - ?!?), and during a recent windstorm we were down to 2 or 3 channels, with both the local PBS and the HD PBS stations offline.

I’m not a big teevee watcher anymore - I watch a total of maybe 6 hours a month, max. That’s due, in part, to the fact that we don’t have cable: I’m sure if I could watch The Deadliest Catch, Mythbusters and Cash Cab regularly, I would.

But even with the very little I watch, I haven’t seen a program yet that at some point didn’t either (1) go black; (2) become pixilated beyond recognition; or, (3) lose its audio/video synchronization.

So, back to my original riddle.

Since digital t.v. signals are weak as shit, leaving even some t.v. sets in Manhattan black when the signal is emanating from the top of the goddamn Empire State Building, this is going to be either an absolute windfall for the cable and satellite companies, or millions of Americans are going to turn to the internet for their teevee wants and needs, marking a bonanza of upgraded services for the telecoms.

And millions of Americans who, especially now, cannot afford to upgrade from rabbit ears to cable or to a new, digitally-receptive t.v., are just going to be shit out of luck.

And as for those emergency responders? Well, instead of getting a piece of the broadcast spectrum formally allocated to free analog television, Congress has decided to auction off that spectrum for broadband wireless, and give emergency services $1 billion for equipment, instead. And since they don’t have the extra free spectrum to work with, it won’t just be the electronics companies providing the hard assets for those services, but the telecoms are bound to get a piece of the action, too, because they’ve got the spectrum to resell. That’s good, long-term service income - not just a one-time purchase.

So, once again Congress and BushCo have offered up the safety and commonwealth of the people to the highest bidder.

Not a surprise, but for a country so addicted to passive visual stimuli, February 17, 2009 is going to be a rude awakening, indeed.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

1 Comments

• At October 29, 2008, John wrote:

  Not that I want anyone to watch more TV, but you can get limited basic cable from Comcast for $13 and change a month. It includes the Discovery channel, 2 PBS channels and a bunch of other garbage. It has more TV programming than I could or would ever want to watch.

  And if you buy a $50 TV capture card for your computer, you can easily pre-program recording your shows to a hard drive and watch them at your leisure while zapping through the commercials.

  I haven't watched a TV commercial for 6 or 7 years now. So much for their business model.

On the day that the first of the bailout dollars are to be disbursed, we learn this:

Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) — Five straight quarters of losses and a 70 percent slide in its stock this year haven’t stopped Merrill Lynch & Co. from allocating about $6.7 billion to pay bonuses.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, both still on track for profitable years, have set aside about $13 billion for bonuses after three quarters, down 28 percent from a year ago. Even some employees at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which declared the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history last month, will get the same bonus they received a year ago.
…
Goldman, the biggest and most profitable Wall Street firm until it opted to become a bank holding company last month, has set aside about $6.85 billion for bonuses, or an average of $210,300 for each employee, down 32 percent from $339,400 a year ago. Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest securities firm until it also converted to a bank, has $6.44 billion for bonuses, or $138,700 per person, down 20 percent from last year.

Unsurprisingly, banks lobbied hard during the consideration of the bailout bill to keep restrictions on bonuses out of any bailout plan.

At the same time as the bonuses are being totaled up:

Goldman Sachs plans to cut about 3,200 people, or 10 percent of its employees, a person familiar with the matter said last week…

More job reductions are likely, especially at Merrill and Lehman. About 10,000 Merrill employees may lose their jobs, estimates Richard Bove, an analyst at Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Options Group, a financial services recruitment and consulting firm in New York, estimates that global banking job cuts could reach 200,000, with as many as 50,000 in New York.
…
Barclays Plc, which is acquiring Lehman’s North American investment banking and capital markets businesses, will cut about 3,000 jobs…

Hedge funds, which have poached top traders from securities firms in the past, may cut as many as 10,000 jobs this year after their biggest losses in more than 20 years, estimates Options Group.

Meanwhile, the banks are using the bailouts for more than just bonuses:

PNC Financial Services Group was approved to receive $US7.7 billion in return for company stock. At the same time, PNC said it was acquiring National City Corp for $US5.58 billion.

Milton Friedman socialism: the taxpayers foot the bill - and the unemployment benefits - while the banks widen their market share and reduce competition, and their top executives profit.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

1 Comments

• At October 27, 2008, John wrote:

  So much for your executive pay oversight in the "socialism for the rich" bailout bill, eh Representative Baird?

The parodies of him is what I mean, not the Bush crime family itself.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

I just got my Fidelity IRA statement and don’t have the guts to open it.

So far this morning, the Dow has fallen almost 360, with many wondering if it will lose 1,100 before 2pm triggering a suspension of trading.

Something has to be done to quell fears of a national/international recession bordering on depression. Yes, emotion is driving the market, but their are big, bad fundamentals behind those fears.

There are $18 billion in ready-to-go infrastructure projects in this country: projects that have been through design and engineering and land acquisition, but are simply awaiting funding.

Analysts estimate that for every $1 billion invested in transportation projects, approximately 35 thousand jobs are created.

That’s 630,000 jobs. That could begin to put a dent in the 2.2 million jobs lost in the last 12 months, including the 3,300 positions that Hank Paulson’s own Goldman Sachs announced it would be eliminating today.

Every dollar invested in infrastructure turns over in the community an average of 8 times - that’s a lot of people stimulating the economy.

Bernanke, Bush & Paulson: you were so good at spending money to buy off phantasms of lost value. Why don’t you give us something concrete for a change, something that will help this country move forward and get people back to work?

Get off your asses, you selfish sons of bitches.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

since we’ve heard from Riverbend.

Her last post was effusive in its praise of her new home in exile in Syria, but the sudden and prolonged silence since that post does not give her readers confidence. The latest reports on Iraqi refugees in Syria and other neighboring countries are mixed, at best; refugees are generally not allowed to work above-board in these countries, with women and children especially vulnerable, relying on U.N.H.C.R.’s meager handouts for food.

Today’s displaced Iraqis are not viewed as sympathetically around the world as those persecuted and uprooted by Saddam Hussein. One reason is that they are seen as a problem largely of America’s making and one that America should therefore ‘fix.’ … Many donor governments as a result have been reluctant to fully share the burden of Iraq’s displaced, believing the United States should foot most of the bill together with the government of Iraq, which over the past year has been able to accumulate considerable oil wealth. Nor have they been overly forthcoming in resettling Iraqi refugees or in offering funds to the governments of Jordan and Syria which house most of the refugees.

The government of Iraq’s attitude toward its displaced population has contributed to this international unwillingness to extend needed support. Even though Iraq’s budget surplus from oil revenues is projected to be $79 billion by the end of 2008, the Shi’a-dominated government of Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has delivered only minimal amounts of funding to neighboring states for the refugees.

Refugees also face the problem of what kind of home will be available to them if they do decide to return to Iraq:

First, indications are that most of the refugees who have returned so far have done so because of economic hardship and visa restrictions in Syria. The “push” factor seems stronger than the “pull” factor. Secondly, virtually all of the return movements have been to areas that have become ethnically/religiously homogeneous. Returnees move primarily to those neighborhoods under the control of members of their sect. Moreover, there are few mixed neighborhoods to which Iraqis can return. This seems to suggest that future patterns of Iraqi returns will bolster sectarian separation, reinforcing the trends of the weakening of religious pluralism in Iraq and the rise of a society where sectarian identity competes with national identity.

Before the illegal U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, Riverbend lived in a peaceful, mixed neighborhood, where being Iraqi - not to mention the camaraderie that develops in the shadow of a tyrant - was foremost. Such neighborhoods are rare to nonexistent in Iraq now.

Here’s hoping that Riverbend and her family have found peace and safety somewhere.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Not a democratized Iraq or a United States free from want and fear, but this:

More families with children are becoming homeless as they face mounting economic pressures, including mortgage foreclosures, according to a USA TODAY survey of a dozen of the largest cities in the nation.

Local authorities say the number of families seeking help has risen in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Washington.

“Everywhere I go, I hear there is an increase” in the need for housing aid, especially for families, says Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates federal programs. He says the main causes are job losses and foreclosures.

And this:

Only two of 30 nations, Mexico and Turkey, are ahead of the United States for income inequality and poverty rates, or the gap between rich and poor, according to a report released Tuesday.

The report was released by Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development of its 30 member-nations, most of which are developed countries.

In America, the average income of the richest 10 percent of people is $93,000. When compared to purchasing power parity, it is the highest in the OECD when compared with the average of $54,000 for OECD nations.

The poorest 10 percent of Americans have an income of $5,800 per year, compared to the OECD average of $7,000.

In addition, the richest 10 percent hold 71 percent of American’s net worth and 28 percent of total income, leaving 90 percent of the population to split the remaining 72 percent of the nation’s income.
…
Social mobility is lower in countries such as Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States where there is a wide distribution of income and higher in Nordic countries where income is distributed more evenly, the OECD said in a statement on its website.

It’s enough to make a mother proud. Well, at least this Mother:

The next time someone tells you that Obama’s a socialist and wants to redistribute wealth, ask them if they enjoy being in company with Mexico and Turkey, or if maybe the U.S. should do better.

But of course, with Charlie Gibson telling the entire country that $200,000 is the average middle class income in the U.S., I guess it’s no wonder that all those “low information voters” at McCain and Palin rallies see themselves as victims of the guvment and those lazy blacks and Mexicans. They know someone must be holding them back from making that kind of income; it certainly couldn’t be a Republican president and Republican Congress, or their own laziness and sense of entitlement, could it?

George W. Bush was their perfect president: a flawless reflection of their own bugs, packaged as features.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Yes, we hear that the rate of casualties among coalition forces has now exceeded those in Iraq, but we have heard nothing like this from the MSM. We have to get it from Rolling Stone:

By the time we reach the town of Salar, only 50 miles south of Kabul, we have already passed five tractor-trailers from military convoys that have been destroyed by the Taliban. The highway, newly rebuilt courtesy of $250 million, most of it from U.S. taxpayers, is pocked by immense craters, most of them caused by roadside bombs planted by Taliban fighters. As in Iraq, these improvised explosive devices are a key to the battle against the American invaders and their allies in the Afghan security forces, part of a haphazard but lethal campaign against coalition troops and the long, snaking convoys that provide logistical support.

We drive by a tractor-trailer still smoldering from an attack the day before, and the charred, skeletal remains of a truck from an attack a month earlier. At a gas station, a crowd of Afghans has gathered. Smoke rises from the road several hundred yards ahead.
…
This highway — the only one in all Afghanistan — was touted as a showpiece by the Bush administration after it was rebuilt. It provides the only viable route between the two main American bases, Bagram to the north and Kandahar to the south. Now coalition forces travel along it at their own risk. In June, the Taliban attacked a supply convoy of 54 trucks passing through Salar, destroying 51 of them and seizing three escort vehicles. In early September, not far from here, another convoy was attacked and 29 trucks were destroyed. On August 13th, a few days before I pass through Salar, the Taliban staged an unsuccessful assassination attempt on the U.S.-backed governor of Ghazni, wounding two of his guards.

As we wait at the gas station, Shafiq and Ibrahim display none of the noisy indignation that Americans would exhibit over a comparable traffic jam. To them, a military battle is a routine inconvenience, part of life on the road… At one point, two green armored personnel carriers from NATO zip by, racing toward Kabul. Shafiq and Ibrahim laugh: It looks like the coalition forces are fleeing the battle.

“Bulgarians,” Shafiq says, shaking his head in amusement.

After an hour, the fighting ends, and we get back in the car. A few minutes later, we pass the broken remains of a British supply convoy. Dozens of trucks — some smoldering, others still ablaze — line the side of the road, which is strewn with huge chunks of blasted asphalt. The trucks carried drinks for the Americans, Ibrahim tells me as we drive past. Hundreds of plastic water bottles with white labels spill out of the trucks, littering the highway.
…
Shafiq laughs. “The Russians were stronger than the Americans,” he says. “More fierce. We will put the Americans in their graves.”

That $250 million highway is the Bush Administration in a nutshell: all show, and a show that ends up putting more people in more danger, while making things easier for the “enemy.” You build only one road, which becomes the only conduit for war materials and supplies, and then you’re surprised when the Taliban take advantage of the sitting ducks you’ve put in their way? It’s not just a lack of troops that have lost Afghanistan, it’s fucking stupidity like this.

Obama wants to send in more troops? Fine. But do it as a prelude to making it safe for all the NATO forces to get the hell out. As the Poorman has so aptly said, there is no way to unshit this bed.

h/t ATR for the link.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

1 Comments

• At October 21, 2008, Tim Marshall. London wrote:

  Not enough troops, not enough money, fighting with two hands and leg tied behind their backs - and next year - USA will re-inforce.

Congratulations, Bush Crime Family, another record broken on your watch.   According to Gallup, 9% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States.  Is it any surprise the stock market is turbulent?:

Americans' Satisfaction (click image to enlarge)

This is for the rest of us:

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

STOCKHOLM (AFP) — US economist Paul Krugman, a prolific New York Times columnist and fierce critic of Washington’s economic policies, won the Nobel Economics Prize on Monday, the Nobel jury said.

Krugman, 55, a Princeton University professor, has formulated a new trade analysis theory which determines the effects of free trade and globalisation, as well as the driving forces behind worldwide urbanisation, the citation said.

Speaking to Swedish public television immediately after the prize announcement, Krugman said the award “obviously will seriously warp my next few days.”

“I hope that two weeks from now, I’m back to being pretty much the same person I was before,” he said, adding: “I’m a great believer in continuing to do work. I hope it doesn’t change things too much.”

…[B]y awarding Krugman, a critic of unfettered free-market policies who has focused heavily on globalisation and the developing world, the jury has indeed decided to confront major, civilisation-changing issues.

In his New York Times columns, Krugman has stood out as a harsh critic of the Bush administration’s free-market policies.

He was also adamantly opposed to the initial wording of US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s 700-billion-dollar financial sector bailout plan — which he described as “financial Russian roulette”, although he conceded that a rescue was needed.

Suck.On.That., Thomas Friedman.

I can haz Treasury Secretary?

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver