A recurring joke [at the Radio & Television Correspondents’ Association dinner] involved photos of the president in awkward positions — bent over as if he’s looking under a table, leaning to look out a window — accompanied by remarks such as “Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere!” and “Nope, no weapons over there!” and “Maybe under here?” — Washington Post

Not very funny at all. After sending 588 American soldiers to their deaths for his political war, after having lied to the American people about the reasons for that war (knowing full well they never would have agreed if told the truth), he has the unmitigated gall to joke about it. “Oh, isn’t it funny? I just started a war, killed more than half a thousand Americans, destabilized the Middle East, and sent us to the poorhouse! Oops! Let’s joke about it!” Already there are people writing in to TV shows complaining about his crass indifference, and more protest is certain to come soon.

After Richard Clarke put on a class act and begged for the forgiveness of the 9/11 families, family representatives marked their respect for his sensitivity. And just hours later, the president was making jokes that were sure to offend so many. And the scary thing is, just as it was with Bush using the video of a flag-draped corpse being pulled out of the WTC rubble in a campaign commercial, Bush and his people truly seem to think there is nothing wrong with this sort of thing. It’s as if they have zero empathy, no true sense for the feelings of people.

It is utterly amazing that this pathetic excuse for a president has either been revealed as a liar and a hack, or has shot himself in the foot, regularly, practically every other day for a few months now, and the press still gives him a wide berth. It is a wonder that his numbers are as high as 50%, even with the press laying off him so much. But I will return to my mantra: turnout, turnout, turnout. It doesn’t show up in polls. It sneaks up on you. And I think it will have a major effect, not only on the presidential election, but on the congressional elections as well. And: look at the third chart down at RealClear polls, and look at the numbers for Congress. The Democrats have consistently polled ahead, an average of 4% above Republicans. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, and yes, it is way to early to tell. But: turnout, turnout, turnout. Repeat after me.

Another note in the “not funny” column. I heard a new expression in a report on the recent assassinations of Hamas leaders by Israel. The expression: “extra-judicial killings.” Is that what they call assassinations now? Ones that take out a target, and all too often a whole bunch of people–excuse me, “collateral damage”–with that target? Frankly, this is more scary than the Reaganspeak terminology (e.g., “freedom fighters” vs. “terrorists” to denote thugs we like and ones we don’t like). Now, direct from Israel, we have “extra-judicial killings” versus “homicide bombers” to denote Israel killing Palestinians and Palestinians killing Israelis. The Sharon government has been taking lessons from the GOP, it seems. News flash, folks: they’re all murders.

One interesting site you may want to look at is the Fundrace 2004 Neighbor Search, which allows you to type in a name or a ZIP code and then get a list of people who donated money to political campaigns, with their address (though many use their business address). It is a bit discouraging that you have to make that information so public (you undoubtedly will get blasted with requests for donations once the fundraisers, and not just political ones, get your name and address), but I suppose that’s the price you pay for protecting the system against massive anonymous, illegal donations.

The site also features great maps showing the geography of the donations, sortable by amount, candidate and so on, with the maps detailed by county, area, and state.

Another site to look at is Iraq on the Record, a database on the House of Representatives site, which allows you to search through a comprehensive listing of 237 different false or misleading statements made by Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, or Rumsfeld, sortable by subject, keyword, and date. For example, Bush claims he never said Iraq was an “imminent threat,” right? Well–

Today the world is also uniting to answer the unique and urgent threat posed by Iraq. A dictator who has used weapons of mass destruction on his own people must not be allowed to produce or possess those weapons. We will not permit Saddam Hussein to blackmail and/or terrorize nations which love freedom.”

Source: President Bush Speaks to Atlantic Youth Council, CNN (11/20/2002).

“On its present course, the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. . . . it has developed weapons of mass death.”

Source: President, House Leadership Agree on Iraq Resolution, White House (10/2/2002).

Unless you want to make the losing argument that “urgent” is not synonymous with “imminent,” it looks like Bush was lying. What a fun database!

You might also want to use Wikipedia for an information source in the future. Wikipedia is a free, open-source encyclopedia, and is very helpful on a wide range of topics, with 230,000 entries so far. “Wiki-wiki” is a Hawaiian word meaning “super fast,” and when used to refer to a web site, means a collaborative project like Wikipedia, where anyone can contribute to the content of the site. Disinfopedia is the “propaganda” version of Wikipedia.

If you want to keep track of Bush’s job ratings, you can visit RealClear Politics or Polling Report.com. RealClear has a much nicer format and is easier to distill information from, whereas Polling Report has more raw data. Pollkatz has a great compilation of polling over time, with good charts–but their data has not been updated for two months or so.

And finally, for those of you who enjoy conspiracy theories, this page will keep you pretty busy. It gives a very highly detailed, heavily sourced account of Flight 93 on 9/11, the plane that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The administration’s answers about this (“we didn’t shoot it down”) just don’t match up with the facts, which demonstrate, for example, that the cockpit tape recording played for the families cut off three minutes before the recorded time of the crash. A lot of good material there, very well put together. I have to say that I do not believe that Flight 93 crashed because of the struggle in the cockpit–the engine landed intact a mile away, indicating that it was shot down; paper debris was found miles from the crash site, too far to have been blown there from the crash. One passenger called 911 claiming to have heard an explosion and seen white smoke coming from the wing; after the call was mentioned to the press, the 911 operator was immediately shut up and not allowed to speak about the matter, the records labeled confidential and never shown publicly, and the government now denies it ever happened.

It is also interesting to note that Bush admits giving Cheney authorization to shoot down the plane. It is my guess that they did exactly that, and then lost the nerve to admit it to the public. Call me a conspiracy nut, but it fits the facts, as well as this administration’s willingness to hide actions they don’t want people to see (can you tell me what happened at Cheney’s energy policy meetings? No? There you go).

The latest, and from how the media is handling it, the most damaging attack against Clarke by the White House has to do with a briefing Clarke gave to reporters in 2002. In the briefing, he said:

the Clinton administration had a strategy in place, effectively dating from 1998. And there were a number of issues on the table since 1998. And they remained on the table when that administration went out of office — issues like aiding the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, changing our Pakistan policy — uh, changing our policy toward Uzbekistan. And in January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. They were also briefed on these series of issues that had not been decided on in a couple of years.

And the third point is the Bush administration decided then, you know, in late January, to do two things. One, vigorously pursue the existing policy, including all of the lethal covert action findings, which we’ve now made public to some extent.

Those are the important parts that are being pointed out; the administration claims that because Clarke said these words, and they go against what he says today, that means that Clarke is contradicting his former statements and so he is a liar, nyah nyah.

What they don’t mention, and what the press is not doing a good job of pointing out, is that Clarke said these things while representing the Bush administration. In short, they were not his opinions. They were the words the Bush White House wanted him to say, and like any good soldier he went along. Note that the date is August 2002, before Bush invaded Iraq, which is to a great extent the thing that made Clarke upset, so at that point Clarke was still willing to do his job, which, effectively, was to tell things the way Bush wanted them told, or quit.

So the Bush White House is saying that Clarke is untrustworthy because he obeyed them when they told him to paint a distorted picture. That’s quite a thing. “He’s a liar because we told him to say that.”

It should also be noted that the briefing in question is presently available in one location and one location only: Fox News. What a surprise.

At the hearings just starting right now, with Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke, you may or may not hear mention of a person by the name of Mansoor Ijaz, and how Clinton was offered Osama bin Laden in 1996 (and possibly in 2000), but let him go. Quite frankly, I’m getting sick and tired of this old overcooked falsehood repeated again and again. The idea is that Clinton was given a viable chance to get bin Laden and somehow decided, “nah, we could put him in prison, but let’s intentionally let him go free.” This is unadulterated Drudge-style garbage.

The oft-repeated right-wing version of the story originates from one Mansoor Ijaz, an investment banker now based in New York, a former “lobbyist for Pakistan” who is now a regular Clinton hit-man on conservative FOX News and the National Review. The story seems to have many variations, that Osama was offered up once, twice, even three times. However, Ijaz has no evidence whatsoever that he was integral, or more than just a liar–and the Clinton White House fully denied that Ijaz was of any use in the situation. They saw him as self-serving, having business ties with Sudan, which was then under embargo for their terrorist ties, wanting the embargo lifted so he could position himself profitably when Sudan opened its oil fields for export as planned in 1997. Clinton’s people, having worked with him before in dealing with Pakistan, this time disregarded him because of the conflicts inherent in his Sudan business connections, not to mention Ijaz’s tendencies to present himself inaccurately to several foreign nations as “agent” of the U.S. government. The Clinton administration underwent negotiations with Sudan without Ijaz, but Ijaz’s self-important story gets repeated ad nauseam–by Ijaz himself–with right-wing platforms eager to give him air time and column space. Ijaz later made even more fantastic claims that he could get Osama extradited in 2000, again unsupported. Apparently, Ijaz would have us believe that he had Osama in a bottle and pleaded with Clinton to take him, but Clinton maliciously unleashed him to wreak havoc upon the world.

Here is the story as it happened:

The government of Sudan, using a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in custody in Saudi Arabia, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.

The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at hotel in Arlington, Virginia, on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later.

Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept Mr. bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture. …

Resigned to Mr. bin Laden’s departure from Sudan, some officials raised the possibility of shooting down his chartered aircraft, but the idea was never seriously pursued because Mr. bin Laden had not been linked to a dead American, and it was inconceivable that Mr. Clinton would sign the “lethal finding” necessary under the circumstances.

In short, Sudan claimed that it would arrest Osama and extradite him to another country, though the veracity of that offer has never been confirmed, and was doubted by many. But the Clinton administration tried to achieve this. However, the U.S. itself could not take him because at that time (and this is what the right-wing hatchet stories usually leave out), bin Laden had not been connected with any U.S. deaths, and the U.S. did not have any jurisdiction to try him. So they tried to convince the Saudis to take him, but the Saudis refused. To suggest that Clinton had the ability to nab bin Laden but decided not to goes contrary to Clinton’s 10-week effort to get bin Laden put in a Saudi jail and possibly executed there. The deal was simply unworkable, pure and simple.

It will interesting to see what Clarke does say, in the light of an unrelenting smear campaign against him by the Bush administration. Cheney, for example, said that Clarke was “out of the loop,” which is bizarre considering that he was the head of the administration’s counter-terrorist operations. Powell claimed that no one handed them a plan for dealing with al Qaeda (though Berger is at this moment claiming the exact opposite, that he told Rice she would be dealing more with al Qaeda than anything else), and in general Bush people are saying, “hey, no one told us” among attempts to pain Clarke a partisan, a bitter and disgruntled man, or a profiteer. Of course, none of that fits the profile for Clarke, and the fact that he served under Reagan and both Bushes as well as Clinton–and that others back up his story.

There are just too many people saying the same things, Clarke is the icing on the cake. At some point, the rantings of the Bush administration, aimed now at so many different people, are going to wear impossibly thin on the ears of the American people (if they haven’t already). With so many respectable names coming out and saying that Bush is a dangerous fool, it is becoming more and more clear that they’re not all kooks, liars and profiteers.

I have been quite remiss in in my neglect until now to mention and link to Justin Faulkner’s Maxx Power site. Justin has been a long-time contributor of valued comments here, and the site he runs has great commentary you should take a look at, regularly. His posts are extremely well-informed, and better detailed than my own. You can find a permanent link on the LinkBoard to the right. Sorry not to get to this before now, Justin.

NASA has recently come out with a spectacular panoramic image of the Bonneville Crater, with startling resolution and quality. I now use the image for my Desktop, and suggest that you do as well. If you click on the image in this entry, you will see the full-size 1280 x 854 image I am using now (slightly enhanced from the NASA version). If you would like to get different image sizes, let me know and I’ll see what I can do. I just love this image for so many reasons, not the least of which is the small but startling piece of metal debris in the upper left corner, startlingly out of place and for a moment evocative of something artificial and alien–which it is, in a sense, being the remains of Spirit’s own heat shield, as alien to Mars as anything can be. But the entire vista, the hills in the background, the amazing detail of the rocks in the foreground–this is a great view to see out your window every day. I just love it.

This is available on a T-Shirt.

NOTE: Many people have been leaving comments which suggest that they believe that this is the official blog for Air America Radio. It is not. The is The Blog From Another Dimension, a private blog. Only this particular entry is titled “Air America Radio.” I think people are confused because I’m now #1 on Google for “Air America Radio Blog” as search terms. The blogs on AAR shut down after the first day, apparently due to techinal problems and/or visitor overload. You can visit the official Air America Radio web site right here.

NOTE: Other postings on this blog about AAR include Gearing Up, On The Air, AA Web Site Back to Spec, and Air America Radio Blogs.

Beginning March 31, just nine days from today, a new radio network will be taking form, something that has not happened for quite some time. Most radio broadcasting in recent years has been in the form of content producers generating programming, and then selling, or syndicating, that content to broadcasters nationwide. However, this has also meant that conservatives have had a lock on the ideological spin of the radio dial because they massively predominate the medium–and since radio stations do not mix and match disparate styles well, it has been hard for any real liberal voice to gain a foothold.

So in comes Air America Radio, a new radio network, with branches in charge of running the stations and generating the programming, charging into at least four major U.S. markets at the end of this month. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York will get the full blast of programming (with syndication and web casts, it is said, filling in elsewhere for the time being). On this, featured host and political commentator Al Franken commented, “I’m so happy that Air America Radio will be on in three battleground states, New York, Illinois and California….no wait…those aren’t battleground states. What the hell are we doing?” Franken, by the way, was just featured in a lengthy article in the New York Times, a very well done piece which in neither a love letter nor a trash piece–“fair and balanced,” you might say.

Al Franken has become the virtual logo of the network, and will broadcast a daily 3-hour show, with other hosts such as actress and comedienne Janeane Garofalo, humorist Sam Seder, hip hop star Chuck D, Marty Kaplan, and Randi Rhodes filling up the Monday-through-Friday schedule. Al Franken’s show, called “The O’ Franken Factor,” will doubtlessly dominate the network, and has been talked about a great deal. Personally, I think they should start trying to sign up Joe Conason and Aaron McGruder, not to mention the unsinkable Molly Ivins.

As soon as they come on line, I plan to start listening in…

It’s happened perhaps a half dozen times by now, only infrequently, maybe once every three or four months at best. But every once in a while, there is a bizarre type of crash–one which scared the hell out of me when I first saw it because it looked like my TFT screen had become completely fried.

At first, it seems like there might be a kind of freeze or kernel panic, because the monitor picture suddenly lightens in the way it used to for a kernel panic–every other pixel becoming lighter. But then it diverges, giving no error or panic message. Instead, it keeps getting lighter, and lighter, with major elements of the last monitor image becoming distorted… and then streaks, like water trails down a window in the rain, start to appear.

Fortunately, when I restart the computer, the screen immediately returns to normal and there are no problems at all until the next freeze. But it quite seriously weirds me out. This time I had the presence of mind to get my camera out and document the problem. Maybe I’ll take it to the Genius Bar at Apple Ginza and ask them if they know what it is. In the meantime, does anyone out there in blogland have any idea of what this is? Any help would be appreciated.

Just a small note on the blog design. For the economy of space and for a better appearance, I have started to display links to other sites on the “LinkBoard” located on the lower right (main page only, for now), just below the “Categories” section. A few may be hard to read, but I kind of like the graphic representation better, and this allows me to put a lot more links into a smaller space–and lets me locate the links closer to the top of the page while not pushing other items so far below. If you have a suggestion for a site that fits in with the type of sites I have on the board, let me know.

If you have a monitor set to 800 x 600 resolution–buy a new monitor! Or set the darn thing to a better resolution. Join the 21st century! This site is optimized to for a minimum 1024 x 768 resolution, though you can still read it at 800 x 600 (objects just start crossing over borders and overlapping). I generate the site using the 1280 x 854 monitor on my Macintosh PowerBook G4 (800 DVI), and check it on my Windows PC monitor set to 1280 x 1024. If you don’t know how to set the resolution, then: for Mac OS X, open System Preferences, click on “Displays,” and click on the desired resolution; for Windows, right-click on the Desktop, choose “Properties” at the bottom of the pop-up menu, click the “Settings” tab at top, and set the resolution in the lower half of the dialog box. (Note: on a Windows machine, especially a cheap one, I would advise caution: I have used some Windows computers that, when I set the resolution too high, the monitor blacks out, probably because of insufficient video memory. With luck, the resolution will reset itself in 15 seconds, but if not, I don’t know how to fix that particular problem…)

This blog is also produced with Mozilla/FireFox as a way to check the appearance, not Explorer. I have found Explorer to be notably deficient in its performance in many ways. Mozilla, and it’s little brother FireFox, are tabbed browsers with great pop-up window blockers, superior preference settings, and much more. If you’re using Explorer now, ask yourself why–and if you’re like most people, the answer will be, “because that’s what was on my desktop when I started browsing.” Hardly a compelling reason for choosing software–and if that was your answer, then get your butt over to Mozilla.org and download the free Mozilla or FireFox browsers (FireFox is a streamlined browser, Mozilla is a fully-featured Internet suite including email, web page editing, and more). Both are open-source, with upgrades coming out with good frequency.

Here is an excerpt from the 60 Minutes interview, and it is rather damning for the Bush administration.

Clarke was the president’s chief adviser on terrorism, yet it wasn’t until Sept. 11 that he ever got to brief Mr. Bush on the subject. Clarke says that prior to Sept. 11, the administration didn’t take the threat seriously.

“We had a terrorist organization that was going after us! Al Qaeda. That should have been the first item on the agenda. And it was pushed back and back and back for months.

“There’s a lot of blame to go around, and I probably deserve some blame, too. But on January 24th, 2001, I wrote a memo to Condoleezza Rice asking for, urgently — underlined urgently — a Cabinet-level meeting to deal with the impending al Qaeda attack. And that urgent memo– wasn’t acted on.

“I blame the entire Bush leadership for continuing to work on Cold War issues when they back in power in 2001. It was as though they were preserved in amber from when they left office eight years earlier. They came back. They wanted to work on the same issues right away: Iraq, Star Wars. Not new issues, the new threats that had developed over the preceding eight years.”

Clarke finally got his meeting about al Qaeda in April, three months after his urgent request. But it wasn’t with the president or cabinet. It was with the second-in-command in each relevant department.

For the Pentagon, it was Paul Wolfowitz.

Clarke relates, “I began saying, ‘We have to deal with bin Laden; we have to deal with al Qaeda.’ Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, said, ‘No, no, no. We don’t have to deal with al Qaeda. Why are we talking about that little guy? We have to talk about Iraqi terrorism against the United States.’

“And I said, ‘Paul, there hasn’t been any Iraqi terrorism against the United States in eight years!’ And I turned to the deputy director of the CIA and said, ‘Isn’t that right?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s right. There is no Iraqi terrorism against the United States.”

Clarke went on to add, “There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda, ever.”

The Bush team needs to be investigated for massive incompetence resulting in a national disaster, if you ask me. They were warned, in no uncertain terms, but their political agenda won the day–and that’s how we got started down this path of destruction.

With the recent revelations brought forth by Richard A. Clarke (former counter-terrorism coordinator from both Clinton and Bush 43 administrations), the picture of the Bush administration’s malfeasance regarding terrorism has been made more complete.

We already knew that Clinton had put together a solid plan to fight terrorism. Clinton, in fact, had gone after al Qaeda as best he could, and the Republicans had even termed Clinton’s attacks on bin Laden as excessive, just an excuse to avoid attention on more important matters, such as whether or not he had gotten sexual favors from an intern. Of course, after the 9/11 attacks, suddenly Clinton was attacked as having been soft on al Qaeda, and the whole mess was his fault. But we found out soon that Clinton, in fact, had a bold plan to hit back at al Qaeda after the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in late 2000, and had presented those plans to Bush.

However, Clinton was perhaps too much more a considerate president leaving office than he should have been. In 1992, Bush Sr. decided to send troops into Somalia while he was a lame duck, essentially sticking Clinton with the check, forcing him to either accept a losing battle in the country or look weak by pulling out the troops. That is one of my greater criticisms of Bush 41, that he played politics with soldiers’ lives to give Clinton a black eye as he entered office. Bush never would have engaged in a military action in Somalia had he won reelection.

Clinton, instead of starting a major military offensive at the end of his term and sticking it in turn to Bush Jr., instead gave the new administration his battle plans and let them make the call.

And the Bush people crashed and burned, ignoring the advice and letting their guard slip dangerously. Clinton National Security Adviser Sandy Berger and Richard Clarke briefed Condoleezza Rice on the plans just a few weeks before Bush took office, making their urgency and utility well-known to the Bush White House. And the Bush White House shut them down, cold. Part of the reason for this was that Bush was busy pushing a missile defense shield, and the idea of terrorist attacks played contrary to that. After all, it would be inconsistent to be fighting an active war on terrorism while developing a missile shield which, by nature, was completely ineffective in countering terrorist threats.

And now we hear from Clarke not only a solid confirmation that the Clinton plan was shunted aside, but that further reasons included the fact that Bush & Co. were far too busy planning an attack on Iraq to be bothered with minor-leaguers like al Qaeda. This despite Bush’s campaign pledge against nation-building, as he secretly planned for regime change and nation-building in Iraq.

So focused were they on Iraq, that when 9/11 happened and it was clear that the enemy was in Afghanistan, Donald Rumsfeld pushed for attacks on Iraq, suggesting Afghanistan–where bin Laden was–be left alone. Why? Clarke claims that “Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq, and we all said, ‘No, no, al Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan.’ Rumsfeld said there aren’t good targets in Afghanistan, and there are lots of good targets in Iraq.”

It strains credulity that more Americans do not hold Bush culpable for the disastrous errors that led up to 9/11, and the obvious prior intent Bush & Co. had to invade Iraq, no matter what evidence they claimed. And this is not just people who worked for Clinton speaking, that includes Bush’s own man from the Treasury Department, Paul O’Neill, confirming Bush’s intent to invade Iraq pre-9/11. Add to that the fact that Bush selfishly refused to create a commission to research the security deficits that allowed 9/11 to happen, and then created a hand-picked executive commission (avoiding a congressionally-appointed one) only when his hand was forced–and even still today demonstrates strident unwillingness to assist that very commission.

The answer could no be more clear: Bush screwed up on 9/11, big time, and he knows all too well exactly where the blame lies. Clarke’s new disclosures on the matter simply bolster that particular conclusion.

You may wonder at the 500th-post claim because the permalink contained in the date for this entry says “516,” but that counting includes test posts I did early on which have since been deleted. So this is #500, and is coming close to the first anniversary to this blog, which will be April 6th, a year after I posted to mention how hard it could be for the uninitiated to set up a blog. But I was also posting about my upcoming trip to Spain, which took me off the air for a few weeks. My real blogging got started in late April after I returned from the trip, and has become a routine for me–especially since August 2 of last year, when I made a resolution to blog at least once each day (231 consecutive days and counting).

Things have changed since I started. After my first full month of blogging, the average number of visitors per day was 22, with a grand monthly total of 442 unique visitors. In the past ten days, my average number of visitors per day was 403, and as of the year to date, I have been averaging about 5400 unique visitors per month. Quite a lift up, though recently the numbers seem to have reached a kind of plateau.

If you are a regular reader of the site, then you are aware of the fact that this site has become a tourist attraction for eyelid twitchers, after a very early post on the topic drew an amazing number of Google hits (I’m presently #2 on Google for that search term, and at least 20 people a day come from search engines looking for information on that topic). Making gyoza is next most popular, with a recent surge of a few dozen Indonesian women from the IndoUSAcouples forum. My review of Mac OS X v. 10.3, a.k.a. Panther, is still drawing lots of hits, after its debut drew the first link from MacSurfer.com that I received–one which brought 8,000 visitors to the site in just two days. And my blog about Christmas in Japan is still getting hits from a prominent mention in the Japan Times several months back.

Running a blog, it seems, can bring you into the public eye in unexpected and often quite interesting ways. The MacSurfer flood was completely unexpected, and checking the stats for the site are kind of like unwrapping a present–you never know what’s going to be in there. And yeah, it’s narcissistic to a certain degree, I’ll grant you that. But narcissism can be so fun!

I should also take the time to thank people who have me on their blogrolls, where many of my visitors also come from: Mark at VuDeja, “K” from Kinuk.co.uk, Nils at Alive in Kyoto, Tim at ChariOtaku, and Kurt at his Hmmn blog at Easterwood. Many of these are linked through the Japan Bloggers Webring, which also sends readers this way via their members list. Thanks also go to Kristen, whose blog made me aware of what is possible in blogging, and to Sako Eaton, with whom I have started the xpat.org web site, designed for North American expats who want to comment on politics and social issues (we’re always open to new contributors–leave a comment with an email address and I can tell you how to join).

Meanwhile, back on BlogD, the latest comment (#569) was left by Latisha, who read the comments on the ancillary eyelid twitching post, and tells us that she started sharing our malady when her husband left for Iraq 3 weeks ago. Our hopes and prayers go out to you, Latisha, and we hope your husband returns to you safe.

This is actually post #501, but I am backdating it to keep the #500 post alive at the top of the blog for a day.

As the election season draws nearer, I will more and more be commenting on the state of things, providing information as well as I can as to why we should not elect Bush, and why Kerry is far more the right man for the job. There is a new category for the blog, Reasons to Not Vote for Bush, and in the next month I plan to start making categorical entries there outlining why Bush is so terribly, disastrously wrong for the country on a plethora of issues, and how the country and the world will be far better off with Kerry in office.

In the meantime, hardly a day goes by when the Bush administration and their associates do not do something rather notably stupid, offensive, or outright illegal. The latest was actually all three: an official merchandiser for Bush/Cheney campaign apparel, it turns out, was selling sweaters emblazoned with the Bush/Cheney logo, all nice and patriotic-looking–except the pullovers were made in Myanmar, formerly known as the nation of Burma.

This is stupid and offensive because the Bush administration has been trying to fight the (unfortunately quite true) image of being an administration that approves of outsourcing, of sending jobs overseas so they can be done more cheaply–thus exporting valuable American jobs. Bush & Co. have been trying to make people believe that the U.S. economy is booming, but the fact that we are hemorrhaging jobs is kind of putting a damper on that. Just last week, Bush tried to appoint a “jobs czar” who would oversee the protection of American jobs. Unfortunately, the businessman Bush chose, a Mr. Anthony Raimondo, whose company makes pre-fab building materials, had fired 75 of his workers (one-sixth of his employees) in 2002 and sent those jobs to China. Which perfectly represented the Bush administration, but not in a way they were looking for. The Bush team promptly put its collective tail between its legs and withdrew the appointment (already six months late, and still no one occupies the job).

The illegal part comes when you realize that not only did the Bush/Cheney sweaters were made abroad, but they were made in Myanmar. And that’s relevant because last July, none other than George W. Bush slapped an embargo, effective September 1st, on all imports from Myanmar, to pressure the country to change from a military dictatorship to a Democracy. So we find out that now Bush merchandise is somehow slipping by his own import ban–which the person who runs the merchandising business admits is clearly illegal.

And the blunders just keep on coming….

I don’t know how I missed this story until now. It is related to yesterday’s post on the Medicare bill, the cost of which Bush’s people lied about in order to get it passed.

But now it seems that while one hand of the Bush administration was busy deceiving Congress, the other was busy deceiving the people, in the shape of fake news video segments. In the videos, “reporters” named “Karen Ryan” and “Alberto Garcia” appear as journalists who praise Bush’s Medicare plan. Problem is, they’re actors. In one video, actors playing a pharmacist and a customer discuss how great Bush’s Medicare plan is, saying that it “helps you better afford your medications.” Bush is also shown receiving a standing ovation. These videos were then sent to news stations, with scripts for the anchors to use to introduce them. Many TV stations did exactly that, presenting these fictional reporters and stories as the real thing, with no indication that they were produced by the government. The videos aired more than 50 times across the country as of a month ago.

Now, you see press releases all the time which are designed to look like they came from a media outlet when they really came straight from an interested party. But this goes way over the line. Calling actors “reporters,” faking videotaped scenes with actors pretending to be pharmacists and patients, failing to identify them as coming from the government, selling them as real–and just as disturbing, making all of them with federal money, when they are little more than thinly disguised political commercials for Bush.

The Bush administration says this is somehow OK because when they pitched it to the TV stations, they didn’t hide the fact they they were working for the government. But using federal money for what are effectively campaign commercials (“publicity or propaganda purposes” is the legal term used) is in violation of federal law. Yet another criminal offense on Bush’s record, and like so many others, one that he will never be held accountable for.

In case you have missed some of the recent news, or like many, if you gloss over a story once you spot “Medicare” in the title, you may not have heard about the most recent Bush White House scandal. The Bush administration has its own plans for Medicare, and the information it gave to Congress claimed that the plan would cost only $395 million over ten years. Thirteen Republican representatives swore they would not vote for the bill if it cost more than $400 billion. But while the debate was going on in Congress, the Bush White House, with all the information available, some they did not hand over to Congress, had an internal estimate for the bill at $534 billion–$139 billion higher than they publicly related to Congress, and far, far over the estimate House Republicans required. The Medicare bill passed a vote in the House last summer by only 5 votes–220 to 215.

So this brings up a pretty serious question: did the White House deliberately deceive Congress as to the price of the bill so it could be passed, knowing Bush’s plan would fail if they revealed the true cost? According to two people, a congressional aide (Ms. Cybele Bjorklund) and a government actuary (a statistician who calculates insurance costs, this one a Mr. Rick Foster), claim that the Bush administrator in charge of Medicare, one Thomas A. Sculley, threatened to fire Foster if he gave the real numbers to Congress. According to Ms. Bjorklund, Sculley told her that “If Rick Foster gives that to you, I’ll fire him so fast his head will spin.”

Now, the Democratic Medicare plan cost a lot more, but Bush won a good deal of popularity saying he could do better on the cheap. Announcing a 35% cost hike and losing the vote would have been a blow to Bush. Right now, Bush’s press secretary is saying the White House supports an investigation, but you can bet that no one will ever pass the buck higher than Sculley. And yet, it is one more scandal atop so many others. There is the investigation into the Valerie Plame felony that is focusing on Cheney’s Chief of Staff, there is the investigation into the Republicans’ 18-month systematic rifling and eventual publication of Democratic Senators’ computer files, and let’s not forget the scandal about Bush’s bald-faced lies about WMD and the threat of Iraq, and the investigation into intelligence failures surrounding 9/11.

And if you want to see a tiny dollop of justice served, see this ad (Flash plug-in required) by MoveOn.org, which is nothing more than a presentation of Donald Rumsfeld getting zinged by an interviewer on Face the Nation, at one moment claiming that no one in the Bush administration said Saddam’s Iraq was an “imminent threat,” and the next moment being presented with two of his own quotes which stated exactly that (one dismissing the negative statement of imminent threat, and the other stating imminent threat in slightly different words). Rumsfeld tries to squirm out, but doesn’t do a very good job. It starts with Rumsfeld saying, “you and a few other critics are the only people I’ve heard use the phrase, ‘imminent threat.’ I didn’t. The president didn’t. And it’s become kind of folklore that that’s what happened.” But then, Rumsfeld is reminded that he said, “Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent…. I would not be so certain.” And, “No terror state poses a great or more immediate threat … than the regime of Saddam Hussein of Iraq.”

Okay… so he didn’t use the exact words, “Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is an imminent threat.” But like Bush, Cheney, and so many others, he said the exact same thing in other ways.

And seeing how all of these are just getting started, Bush’s hopes for sweet timing to help him win his campaign are not as encouraging as one might think. But Bush may have a trump card to play: Osama bin Laden. When reports were made out of Iran that bin Laden had been caught, and Bush was simply holding him for release at a politically opportune time, one should note that very soon after, the Bush administration began a huge 24/7 push to hunt down bin Laden–a search that was previously scheduled to start in May. Probably bin Laden has not been caught, but I would not be at all surprised if he were pinned down, and publicity is being generated to be a prelude to his capture… and that had the reports of bin Laden’s capture had not been reported, we would not be seeing any of this now. So, okay, call me a conspiracy theorist. But this is exactly the kind of manipulation Bush has shown he is expert at, and so if bin Laden is caught within the next few weeks–as I suspect he will be–my suspicions will be at an all-time high.

When I was a kid, my mom used to make Caldo, a meat and vegetable stew, for my dad. My favorite part was the chorizo (the “z” pronounced as “th”), the smoky, spicy sausage. When I went to Spain a year ago, I went chorizo crazy–I had to get as much of it as I could while the getting was good. I even took three full-sized chorizo back with me to Japan, along with three large cans of pimenton, the spice that gives chorizo its signature flavor.

Well, the chorizo didn’t last too long, though I was able to restock the pimenton during my visit home last December. And there is a Spanish restaurant I found in central Tokyo which serves good Chorizo (Spain Club, Tsukishima 1-14-7. Open noon-2:30, 5:30-10pm daily. Phone: 03-3533-5381). But other than that, good chorizo is hard to find.

Take what you can get at the supermarket, for example. In Spain, a good market would have a large meat section, where they have all sorts of spiced meats hanging, for sale by slice or sausage roll. Here in Japan, whatever there is in that area is not only vacuum packed in plastic but is also mighty tame in comparison, at least in most supermarkets.

And they do sell chorizo. Or at least what they call chorizo. But you know, it just ain’t chorizo. Pales terribly in comparison with the real thing. I mean, just look at it, here on the left. It’s just plain sausage with a little spice. Not the same thing at all.

I gotta get me back to Spain sometime. I’ve got a real Chorizo Jones going here.

Now, this is real chorizo, on the plate and in the store, in Spain.

Something that Americans do not often think about is what it would be like to have foreign military bases in your country. Even living in Japan, knowing the bases are here, it doesn’t come to mind much, and though there are many who protest the bases in Okinawa and sometimes elsewhere in Japan, the truth is, you don’t hear about it often. But then, most Japanese people will not complain about the obnoxious politicians during campaign season with their all-day loudspeaker truck battles, so it doesn’t mean that nobody minds. I certainly know that Americans would mind if, say, England had bases across the country.

Living out in Western Tokyo, I tend to be reminded of this a bit more often. Just tonight, several jets flew over–more than usual, but still, we get them flying out of Yokota Air base, the main American base in Japan, housing the HQ for a string of military bases with as many as 50,000 American servicepeople living on them, along with about 52,000 dependents. That’s a lot of people.

Most of the forces are based in Okinawa (around 78%), including bases at Kadena, Futenma and Torii; Okinawa is a well-known island at the southernmost end of the Japanese archipelago. It’s famous for being a Hawaii-like resort, and for the fact that American bases occupy 30% of the land area on the island. Next is Tokyo, with bases in Yokota (air base), Yokosuka (naval), Zama, Sagamihara, Fuji and Atsugi. That probably does not include the U.S.-military-run area in tama, immediately behind my apartment building in fact, which houses ammunition storage and a golf course/recreation center. There’s also the naval base at Sasebo (Nagasaki), the Marine Corps base in Iwakuni (Yamaguchi, also southern Japan), and Misawa Air Base (Aomori, in northern Japan).

I remember first going to Yokota, to visit a coworker living there. You come through the gate, and suddenly you’re looking at an American landscape. The streets, the green-lawned front yards, the building styles, the shops and their contents–it’s like being suddenly transported to the U.S. In the days before Costco and other now-common import stores, the shops on base were a major attraction–if you could buy something there. You need to have base ID to do that. I remember one friend who said he’d found a way to sneak on base at Yokota–had to do with following train tracks until they intersected with a road on base, which was unguarded–and usually got away with shopping there by claiming he’d forgotten his ID cards at home.

But few Japanese know what it’s like on the base, save for those who work there or those who visit for air shows and the like. It’s something I’d be interested in talking to more Japanese people about. One time, it came up while I was visiting the local hospital. A man in his eighties, very gregarious, struck up a conversation (in Japanese), and we talk about various topics. One that came up was the bases (the entrance to the local munitions dump and rec center is right next to the hospital), and I asked him how he felt about it. He didn’t mind, he said; “we lost the war, after all.” I suppose that made a certain sense to him, having lived through that time. But I have to wonder what younger Japanese people feel about it. Strange that I’ve been in Japan close to 12 years now and have never asked. But I suspect the answer would be along the lines of not knowing much and not caring much–it’s just the way things are.

Do any of the visitors here have their own stories, conversations you can relate on the subject? I’d be interested to know.

A lot of people have been talking about the Spanish elections, and I realized it has been days since I have mentioned it. I am not in constant contact with family in Spain, though my father is, so I have not heard how this has unraveled locally in Spain. Many people, my aunt included, thought that it was an ETA bombing, largely due to the timing (just before an election) but also because of reports that the explosive used was similar to the ETA’s.

Anti-war postings like this, as well as banners and signs, were everywhere in Spain last April

For a few days, that was all that really came out, with the Spanish government not saying much about what they found, despite growing suspicions abroad and in Spain that it may have been al Qaeda–particularly, the target (working people as opposed to politicians), the scale (200 killed in one day, as opposed to 800 killed by ETA over 30 years), and the more sophisticated coordination of the attack. Add to that the fact that the ETA denied responsibility for the attacks, something they have never done before.

The conservatives had an interest in finding ETA to be the villains–it would bolster their showing in the elections, as they have been known to be the tough ones when it concerns the Basque separatists. In contrast, an al Qaeda attack would hurt them, as 90% of the population in Spain has been solidly against the Iraq war, and an al Qaeda attack would further the public animosity because it would appear that the Aznar government brought on the terrorist attacks and was unable to prevent them.

Even so, it is quite possible that the al Qaeda attacks would not have hurt the government so much–but what really hurt the conservatives is that they withheld information of arrests of al Qaeda suspects, and tried to use the specter of the ETA to their advantage in the last few days before the election. And that the people of Spain were furious over. The conservatives effectively shot themselves in the foot. The Socialists won with unexpected strength, not quite clinching the majority, but with enough seats to create a coalition of their own, to control the government–and now, they are reporting that they will pull the 1,300 Spanish troops out of Iraq as soon as possible. My aunt, though still traumatized over the attacks, is ecstatic about the political developments, having been furious with the Spanish involvement in the war.

It will be interesting to see how things play out over the next several weeks. The “Coalition of the Willing,” as it stands, may have one less member very soon. It may have been a victory for al Qaeda, if they were indeed the perps, but it was Aznar’s people who made it into one for them. It also opens questions about what might happen in the United States this Fall–our trains are no better protected, as well as a lot of other infrastructure, and Bush has spent very little domestically to protect against terrorism. The question really is, does al Qaeda want to hurt Bush in the election, or help him? A very relevant question, depending on how you see things.

There is an interview with a U.S. soldier returned from Iraq, a medic, by Daniel Redwood, posted on this site. A very calm, detailed and informative look at what is happening in Iraq, one that is not Sanitized For Your Protection, from the viewpoint of a medic who has been in the thick of things. Among the more interesting points:

• The sanitization of the war. Dead and wounded being hidden from view, and active orders from the government to not count Iraqi casualties. Political sanitization too–before the 2003 Thanksgiving photo-op with Bush, soldiers were given a questionnaire asking “Do you support the president?” Only soldiers who responded with a “gung-ho, A-1, 100 percent yes” were allowed to eat the turkey meal; the other soldiers were given MREs and not allowed in the cafeteria for the Thanksgiving dinner.

  Also about how only soldiers who are saying positive things tend to get put before the media (the soldier interviewed had to remain anonymous because he is still serving, and is not supposed to speak freely in criticism against the government); about how villages and areas are cleaned up before politicians or others visit to see them, how they are not taken to certain areas.

• Soldiers not being cared for. About the flak jackets not being supplied, nor good enough footwear, canteens and backpacks; too much gear being worthless because it got supplied on the cheap, or not at all, and how they and their families have to get the gear themselves, and pay out of their own pocket. The need for V.A. Hospitals and treatment for all the wounded and traumatized who are coming back, and the administration that wants to cut billions from that program.
• The troop rotation, and how a present 80% well-trained active-duty and 20% green reserve force will be switched to a 20% active-duty and 80% reserve force (possibly 50-50), and how this is exceedingly dangerous; with the extreme heat of the summer months coming, the death toll in the coming months may rise significantly. There has been no other war in which such a high percentage of the troops in the field were less-trained reservists.
• Aftermath issues, such as a high suicide and divorce rate among returning soldiers.
• That our soldiers will be there for 10 years. (Something rarely mentioned, something Bush & Co. try to mask with the “handover of power” to Iraqis–our soldiers will continue to be there, and will continue to be killed). About how things could seriously get out of hand, how Iraqis were happy that we got rid of Saddam but want us to get out and get out now.

And a lot more stuff. Informative. Sometimes disturbing.

We’ve all been aware of the fact that Bush has wanted all negative light on the war smothered, but it is rare to hear so directly from a person involved that there is a standing order not to count Iraqi dead and wounded. The suicide and divorce rate of returning soldiers is also an issue not reported much. We really are being kept largely unaware of the real costs being paid for this war, aside from the massive financial burdens and costs in international influence and respect.

The soldiers not being cared for we’ve heard about as well, but it tends to stay under the radar of the media. I remember at the Democrats Abroad Caucus, one attendee reporting that her son did not get his flak jacket, so they had to buy one and send it to him. This is a very real and onerous shortcoming of the Bush military.

But perhaps most disturbing is the report about the percentage of reserves in the troop rotation. I had not known about that. That a majority of troops in a war zone will be reservists, that the danger and casualty rate is likely to rise, not because resistance is higher but because the administration is mishandling the war. That, combined with recruiting and reenlistment problems, and the fact that we will be there at least ten more years, is a matter that should be of great concern.

We were lied to about the reasons for invading Iraq, and now we are being lied to about the state of affairs. With an election coming up, the president is hiding the dead and wounded, muffling the opposition, and trying desperately to make Americans believe that we will not be there much longer–when exactly the opposite is true.

Thanks once more to Tim at ChariOtaku for alerting me to this.