Showing posts with label Bush administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush administration. Show all posts
Friday, June 08, 2007
An article in Slate about how the Bush administration is attempting to block the Whole Foods Market merger with Wild Oats. The punchline is the Bush administration NEVER gives a flip about mergers except now when tofu and granola eaters are affected they decide that it is a bad idea.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
There is a story today in the associated press about the Bush administration's efforts to prevent a small cattle ranch from testing all it's cattle for Mad Cow Disease and then certifying their beef as free from the deadly illness.
The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.
Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.
In a way, I see the view of the large producers on this one. Mad Cow is not a serious risk in this country. E Coli and salmonella are problems that we need to address. Mad Cow is not that easy to get. 3 people have received it in the US (that we know of), and 100 died in England until they changed their standards. This is mostly a marketing gimmick. If they certify their meat comes without e coli, because each steak is individually tested, then sealed hygienically, it would be a way to stand out from the crowd on safety. Mad Cow free certification, when we haven't had a real outbreak in this country is playing on fear.
We do have a free market though. The Bush administration proves a point many people are making about so called conservatism. It's very situational at best to be charitable. They are trying to prevent a small person from doing something that might offend the stockholders at large concerns. No other reason. This is all about corporate profits.
Those of you who want to pay $2.00 or however much more extra a pound for this "mad cow free" beef are free to do so. If a large group of Americans insist on this switch, the other companies are free to do the same, or to do things just the way they are doing.
I would buy guaranteed salmonella free chicken and pay a premium on that btw. Food poisoning the last time from chicken made me violently ill for a week. There is a market there.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
It's true. Apparently he doesn't buy their explanation that the dog accidentally ate the emails from the RNC run server where they plotted all their evil deeds to keep them out of government databases. Accidents do happen though. Just ask Rosemary Woods.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.
"They say they have not been preserved. I don't believe that!" Leahy shouted from the Senate floor.
"You can't erase e-mails, not today. They've gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them. We'll subpoena them if necessary."
Lately, I am getting sick of the weasel words used by the press. This has come to light especially during the US attorney scandal. They use phrases like "appears to contradict", "is at odds with" "does not match" when dealing with statements from Bush administration officials and reality.
Lying is lying. Being gentle when people lie might be a reason why people think they can get away with lying. The media by soft selling the fact that our chief law enforcement official is a big fat liar are serving democracy and their readers how exactly?
Like much of what goes on in the Bush administration ,this reminds me of the Watergate era. We have criminality, inoperative statements, a mostly passive press corps except for a few dogged journalists, missing data, and a war that is a quagmire.
To paraphrase "Deep Throat" from 'All The President's Men', these people are not very bright, and they have gotten in over their heads. Anybody want to place bets that they didn't do a very professional job in trying to illegally delete all these naughty emails?
George W. Bush will be out in the Rose Garden soon, saying "The Merkin people have to know I am not an evil doer. Well, I am not an evil-doer. Heh heh heh heh".
Update:Talking Points Memo has uploaded footage of Leahy's speech.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa.
This deal violated the trade sanctions against North Korea, but here is the thing. North Korea now has the ability to play with weapons of mass destruction. The lesson everybody should learn from the last several years is twofold. It is in rogue nation's best interests to acquire nuclear weapons because we won't attack you at that point. We knew Iraq didn't have that capability or we wouldn't have attacked.
Once Pakistan developed nukes, we became much more friendly to them. They can screw up quite a bit by allowing people responsible for 9/11 inside their borders, by allowing the Taliban to operate with little cause for concern. They have nukes.North Korea was part of the axis of evil until they started testing explosions. All of a sudden, we cut deals with them. Now, they go break sanctions, start arming Ethiopia, and we say go ahead. It's no big deal. It doesn't hurt that we supported Ethiopia in their stand off, but the fact that North Korea has tested weapons of mass destruction is a big part of why our attitude is lax.
This is why I think Cheney knew Iraq was a paper tiger. If we really thought that Iraq was a nuclear power, Sadam Hussein would still be in power today. That is why he was so desperate to lie about the evidence. He might have thought that soon Hussein would get nukes, but the case made that he already had them is proven a lie by how we treat people who acquire these weapons; like North Korea.
There is a long article today in the Boston Globe about Monica Goodling and all of the graduates of Pat Robertson's law school who are members of the Bush administration. Regent University is considered not very academically serious, but they had an in of course. The head of Regent's government school was picked as the head of the Office of Personnel Management for the executive branch, meaning that they were in charge of hiring decisions for the Bush administration in the thousands of executive branch jobs that needed to be filled. Here is a little highlight.
Many of those who have Regent law degrees, including Goodling, joined the Department of Justice. Their path to employment was further eased in late 2002, when John Ashcroft , then attorney general, changed longstanding rules for hiring lawyers to fill vacancies in the career ranks.
Previously, veteran civil servants screened applicants and recommended whom to hire, usually picking top students from elite schools.
In a recent Regent law school newsletter, a 2004 graduate described being interviewed for a job as a trial attorney at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in October 2003. Asked to name the Supreme Court decision from the past 20 years with which he most disagreed, he cited Lawrence v. Texas, the ruling striking down a law against sodomy because it violated gay people's civil rights.
"When one of the interviewers agreed and said that decision in Lawrence was 'maddening,' I knew I correctly answered the question," wrote the Regent graduate . The administration hired him for the Civil Rights Division's housing section -- the only employment offer he received after graduation, he said.
Now, you get a better idea of why things happened the way they have over the past six years. It is pretty damned sad that somebody can only get a job with the executive branch when all private firms reject you on the basis that you hate homosexuals. I think it's time to look at the Civil Right's Division. If this person is an indication, they probably have their own screw ups that haven't been brought to the light of day.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
NEW DELHI, MAR 22: Left parties on Thursday said America’s opposition to the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline was an “outrageous interference” in New Delhi’s affairs and asked the UPA government to resist such pressures and go ahead with the project. Maintaining that the gas pipeline project was of vital interest to India’s energy security, CPI(M) politburo said the government “must proceed with it and ensure the completion of the negotiations with Pakistan on the transit fee and other charges”. The American opposition was motivated by its “partisan interests and its targeting of Iran,” it said and described as “disturbing” reports that US energy secretary Samuel Bodman had conveyed to the Indian government Washington’s objections to the project.
Similarly, CPI Central Secretariat said, “This is nothing but outrageous interference in the affairs of India. As a sovereign country, India has every right to strengthen its energy security through economic cooperation with Iran.”
To be clear here, what the US is proposing is weakening Iran economically, and also making Pakistan and India suffer in solidarity with Iran. Sanctions against Cuba are working out really well too. I think it's great actually that Pakistan and India are co-operating here. It is a healthy sign of progress. Therefore the Bush administration wants no part of it, and are pressuring India hard to kill the deal.
On NPR today I heard a report about how Iran is actually propping up Iraq's economy in several cities, actually flooding the market with goods and keeping things going. No Iran's motives are not pure. They are far from ideal. The Bush administration though is functionally mentally retarded however. This deal with Iran, Pakistan, and India might help the region grown more serene. They really don't know, but their gut reflex to punish Iran no matter who may else suffer is childish, counterproductive, and typical of their behavior.
Sticking our fingers in our ears and shouting LA LA LA at the top of our voices is not diplomacy. John Bolton isn't working for us anymore right?
Sunday, March 18, 2007
RUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States said on Sunday its ban on direct aid to the Palestinian government would remain in place but it broke ranks with Israel by authorizing contacts with some members of the new unity administration.
The U.S. consulate in Jerusalem said Washington would continue to shun Hamas ministers in the power-sharing Palestinian cabinet but permit contacts with non-Hamas members on a case-by-case basis.
The decision to allow some contacts marked a shift in U.S. policy and a split with Israel, which said it would boycott the new government in its entirety, including non-Hamas ministers.
That is very white of us. Because of course, economic sanctions have worked so well in the past to make countries love us. I mean take a look at Cuba for example. The policy will work as soon as we can pay off Castro's doctors.
The people of Palestine voted for Hamas. I disagreed with their decision, but the choice was theirs to make. They took the unprecedented step of actually compromising, and allowing some powersharing with Fatah that lost the election. What more do we want here exactly? A revote? Best two out of three?
Do we honestly think that several more years of living in squalor is going to teach the Palestinians a lesson and they will embrace us for giving them the tough love they needed? What is the objective of this policy? Where in the past has following this policy produced the results that are desired? Or are these the actual desired results? More conflict in Israel and Palestine means more unstable mideast which helps keep oil prices high. You don't have to be a radical conspiracy theorist to believe that the Bush administration is doing about everything in it's power to destabilize the region. Incompetence or Evil?
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