What a country.
A new Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll finds that, among likely voters, “the Republicans own a dramatic 49% to 40% advantage” when it comes to who they want to control Congress following the next election. The same poll finds that the approval rating of President Obama’s handling of the economy is at a low 39 percent.

Mission accomplished?
As the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, most of the observers believe that corruption on all level of government — Afghanistan is currently ranked as the second-most corrupt government in the world by Transparency International, only Somalia is worse — may be the primary obstacle to forming a self-sustaining government and stable country. That led the NYTimes to ask this question last week: “What if government corruption is more dangerous than the Taliban?”
Reuters reports today that the epidemic of corruption in the country along with the ongoing war is serving to swell the “number of Afghan street kids” — children who have to work the streets in order to survive:
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Nog maar heel even en dan is het 9/11. Met spanning wordt in de VS uitgekeken naar de aankomst van onze man in den vreemde, Geert Wilders. Op negen september kan hij in New York namelijk helemaal los gaan over de Islam want een rechts kabinet zit er in Nederland toch niet meer in.
Toch kan het wel eens zo zijn dat de aandacht van het soort moslims dat voortdurend op zoek is naar beledigingen van Westerlingen niet gevestigd zal zijn op wat er gebeurd bij Ground Zero maar op een plaats elders in Amerika. De Dove World Church gaat namelijk Korans verbranden om de wereld vooruit te helpen. Het is weliswaar verboden door de rechter maar daar trekken echte Christenen zich niets van aan. 

‘Islam is of the devil’… Dove World Church is of God 

On September 11, 2010, the extremist evangelical Dove World Church — whose pastor, Terry Jones, has written a book called “Islam Is Of The Devil” — plans to host “International Burn a Quran Day,” when it will burn Islam’s sacred text and encourage others across the world to do so as well. Church member Wayne Sapp has even posted an instructional video that explains how and why to burn the Quran.
But today the Wall Street Journal reports that Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the planned burning of Qurans “could put the lives of American troops in danger and damage the war effort“:
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Nobelprice winner Paul Krugman, NYTimes - Here’s the situation: The U.S. economy has been crippled by a financial crisis. The president’s policies have limited the damage, but they were too cautious, and unemployment remains disastrously high. More action is clearly needed. Yet the public has soured on government activism, and seems poised to deal Democrats a severe defeat in the midterm elections.
The president in question is Franklin Delano Roosevelt; the year is 1938. Within a few years, of course, the Great Depression was over. But it’s both instructive and discouraging to look at the state of America circa 1938 — instructive because the nature of the recovery that followed refutes the arguments dominating today’s public debate, discouraging because it’s hard to see anything like the miracle of the 1940s happening again.

The man who established the popular progressive blog DailyKos, Markos Moulitsas, has written a new book: American Taliban: How War, Sex, Sin and Power Bind Jihadists and the Radical Right. It examines the similarities between Islamic extremists and the American rightwing. Markos already wasn’t very popular in conservative, neocon circles. Maybe because of his Greek name or because he is a homosexual but certainly because he has served in the US army, which most neocons can’t say. But after publishing this book he’s not that popular in some progressive circles too. Many liberals have strongly condemned the book on the ground that it is offensive and misguided to suggest that American conservatives are comparable to Muslim Terrorists by which they mean the Taliban. Glenn Greenwald finds some of these objections both absurd and revealing.

Rightwing constantly suggesting a liberal sympathy with Islamic Terrorists

In what universe is it “obscene” to compare the architects of the Iraq War, the torture regime, and endless War with Muslims “to killers and terrorists”? The comparison is true by definition. The people who launched the attack on Iraq are guilty of an aggressive war — what the Nuremberg prosecutors condemned as the “kingpin crime” that “holds together” all other war crimes — which killed hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings, turned millions more into refugees, and destroyed an entire nation. 
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by patrick chappatte, the international herald tribune

Tony Blair says in his memoirs he does not regret serving as the voice for W.’s gut when the inexperienced American princeling galloped into war with Iraq. As for “the nightmare that unfolded” — giving the lie to all their faux rationales and glib promises — Tony wants everyone to know he has feelings. (Maureen Dowd, NYTimes)

Paul Waldman Prospect - When the Texas Board of Education was debating last year whether and how to undermine any acceptance of the demonic idea of evolution in their schools, board member Don McLeroy, a young-earth creationist, said passionately that when it comes to figuring out what knowledge to pass on to our young people, “somebody’s got to stand up to experts!” Lots of people are standing up these days. On the other hand, McLeroy lost his next election. So maybe there’s hope.

You could argue that as a society, we’re smarter than we’ve ever been. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2008, 29.4 percent of Americans over the age of 25 had a bachelor’s degree or higher. Compare that to 1960, when only 7.7 percent of Americans over 25 had a college degree. The tech revolution, furthermore, turned nerds and geeks into heroes. Our age has been shaped by brilliant and quirky tech geniuses, from Microsoft’s Bill Gates to Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Every day brings new advancements in science, technology, and our capacity to assemble, create, and use data.
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by pavel constantin, romania

“Last night in only his second Oval Office address, President Obama announced the end of Operational Iraqi Freedom. He said we have given the Iraqis a Western-style government. Well, we certainly have, haven’t we? Their economy is in shambles, their Congress is corrupt, the country is broke, welcome aboard!
Before President Obama’s address, he called former President George W. Bush. I’m not saying the economy is bad, but he called collect.” (Jay Leno)

UPDATE, Sep 8, 12:09 PM: Een vestiging van de Kabul Bank in de Afghaanse hoofdstad is gisteren bestormd door honderden Afghanen. De afgelopen dagen hebben Afghanen ruim 250 miljoen dollar bij de Kabul Bank opgenomen. Er gaan geruchten dat de Kabul Bank dreigt om te vallen. De bank heeft ongeveer een half miljard in kas. De Kabul Bank is in de problemen gekomen door riskante leningen te verstrekken en mislukte investeringen in Dubai.

If Reagan would run as a Republican now he would be the laughing stock of the party. Rush Limbaugh would tear him to shreds and Bill Kristol would accuse him of being a Neville Chamberlain. He would be run out of town as a tax-raising, amnesty giving, terrorist negotiating, cut and run no-good lib who hates the troops.
Cenk Uygur (Young Turks) on: Who is More Conservative: Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama? Ronald Reagan:
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This weekend Glenn Beck had Rabbi Daniel Lapin on his show on Fox News. Maybe someone should point out to Glenn Beck’s guest that, even though it may feel good to condemn all atheists as “parasites” in a “moral society,” it is profoundly irresponsible to do s0. Particularly for a man of God. After all, there is an important historical precedent for what happens when you single out an entire sector of the populace as a “parasitical element.”
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by paresh nath, the khaleej times, uae

The withdrawal of 100,000 troops from Iraq since Obama’s inauguration is significant, and it’s a good thing that the President adhered to the withdrawal schedule. But 50,000 troops remaining is a huge number. It’s what Donald Rumsfeld originally envisioned as the occupying force to be used three months after the invasion — and it’s inevitable that in the future Americans will still fight and die in Iraq. Glenn Greenwald:

AP refuses to use White House/NBC propaganda terms for Iraq

On August 18, NBC News anchor Brian Williams began his broadcast by excitedly declaring: ”It’s gone on longer than the Civil War, longer than World War II. And tonight, U.S. combat troops have pulled out of Iraq.” He immediately called in Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel, who was exclusively embedded with the 4th Stryker Brigade. Engel excitedly announced that “the last American combat troops rolled” into Kuwait just moments ago. [read on] (more…)

At a meeting with Republicans in Irvine yesterday, former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey shared an odd conspiracy theory:

“I’m tired of people being Republican all their lives and then changing parties when they die,” quipped Armey, 70.

The idea that dead people are voting Democratic is even more of a reach than popular and well-debunked ACORN conspiracy theories. [read on] (more…)

This is some really crazy shit. The Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of Daniel Millis, convicted of littering because he left sealed bottles of drinking water in a desert wildlife refuge for illegal immigrants. There was just one dissention. Judge Jay Bybee. Right, the judge who wrote the memo to authorize the torture of the Bush-men. 

Today the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction of Daniel Millis, convicted of littering because he left sealed bottles of drinking water in a desert wildlife refuge. He explained that he left them “along frequently traveled routes for unlawful entrants to the United States.” He belongs to a group called “No More Deaths,” and the opinion quotes his testimony: “humanitarian aide [sic] is never a crime.”
The majority overturned his conviction because a reasonable person might not understand that leaving drinking water for people dying of thirst is littering. The United States countered that the water bottles constitute “garbage” in the sense of the statute. After foraging through some dictionary definitions of “garbage” and “discarded,” the majority concludes that the regulation is too ambiguous to enforce in this case.

Ieder mens die niet ideologisch wordt gedreven en een beetje verstand in zijn kop heeft zou nu moeten weten dat het criminaliseren van drugs zinloos is. Een blinde kip ziet dat het gebruik er niet door afneemt en dat de criminaliteit niet in te dammen is.
Maar u hoeft het niet van een blinde kip aan te nemen. Er is ook objectief controleerbaar onderzoek naar gedaan. Daaruit blijkt dat het gebruik van hard en soft drugs niet toeneemt als je ze uit de criminaliteit haalt en dat de misdaad er om heen sterk afneemt. Je hoeft maar te kijken naar het succes van de heroine-aanpak in Nederland. En in Portugal is het drugsgebruik na de decriminalisatie van drugs in 2001 over de hele linie is afgenomen. 
Het is eigenlijk heel simpel. Beleid is succesvol als het mensen accepteert zoals ze zijn. Beleid dat op basis van religie of andere ideologieen mensen in keurslijven dwingt waar ze niet in passen, werkt uiteindelijk niet, nergens, nooit.
Laten we hopen dat de VS nu eens het goede voorbeeld geeft.

In November, California voters will vote on Proposition 19, which would legalize marijuana in that state. Glenn Greenwald is on the Board of Advisers of Just Say Now, an organization working for its passage.
It was announced today that Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein – Iraq War supporter, champion of Bush appointees Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey, Surveillance State cheerleader, and beneficiary of her husband’s vast, defense contracting wealth — will take the lead in working to defeat Prop 19 and thus keep marijuana criminalized, in turn keeping Mexican cartels empowered and adult American citizens prosecuted for using this substance which is far less harmful than alcohol, if it is even harmful or dangerous at all.

UPDATE, september 3rd, 2010 at 9:44: Het is geen boorplatform maar een productieplatform. Dat is een stuk minder gevaarlijk. Alles is onder controle. Er zou ook geen olie lekken.

Er is weer een boorplatform in de Golf van Mexico geexplodeerd. Er zijn geen doden gevallen, wel lekt er olie. Aangezien het platform in ondiep water staat, zou een eventueel lek snel gedicht kunnen worden. Wat wel mooit uitkomt, is dat deze week net grootscheeps actie wordt gevoerd door Big Oil tegen het moratorium op boren naar olie in de Golf van Mexico.

Gas and oil drilling platform exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana 

Oh great… So maybe this wasn’t the best week for Big Oil to organize protests of the drilling moratorium after all. 

An offshore oil platform exploded and was burning Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico about 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay, with some workers reported in the water.
The explosion aboard the platform, owned by Mariner Energy, occurred west of the site of the April offshore rig blast that caused the massive BP oil spill.
The Coast Guard said no one was killed in the explosion, which was reported by a commercial helicopter flying over the site around 9 a.m. CDT.
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Wist u dat illegale immigranten uit Latijns-Amerika naar de VS komen om daar in de woestijn van Arizona mensen te onthoofden?
Nee, JdeW ook niet.
Maar de Republikeinse gouverneur van Arizona Jan Brewer (geen familie) weet dat soort zaken natuurlijk wel.

Arizona reporters attempted to ask Jan Arizona gouvernor Brewer why she would not retract her false claim during the debate that illegal immigrants conduct beheadings in the Arizona desert. Brewer had her third awkward silence of the night, and walked away without answering.

De uitkomst is voorspelbaar. De toespraak die Fox News-coryfee Glenn Beck hield voor 78.000 volgelingen tijdens zijn ‘Restoring Honor’ rally in Washingtoon zal worden gecontroleerd op zijn accuraatheid. Maar ze zijn nog bezig. Wel is de juisheid bijgehouden van stellingen van Beck heeft verkondigd in zijn Fox News show. De uitslag best mee. Van de 17 uitspraken bleek er 1 juist, 1 ietwat juist, de rest nonsens.
Vandaar wellicht dat Beck zo tegen scholen en universiteiten tekeer gaat.

Last night, Fox News televangelist Glenn Beck railed on universities, declaring that “we have been setting up re-education camps. We call them universities.” Beck also explained that “our children are being submerged in the filth of communism” at schools around the country.
“Let me ask you, there was a time not long ago in this country we walked you through walls of fire to make sure we weren’t funding Hamas or Hezbollah. I have news for you. There are a lot of universities that are as dangerous with the indoctrination of the children as terrorists are in Iran or North Korea.”

The Truth-O-Meter report card on Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor speech 

We’ll be fact-checking Glenn Beck and others who speak at his “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday. We hope to publish those items in the next few days.
In the meantime, we thought it would be timely to look at Beck’s record on the Truth-O-Meter. As you can see from the running tally in his PolitiFact file, we’ve rated 17 statements by the Fox News talk show host. It’s fair to say that record skews toward the False end of the Truth-O-Meter.

His record (as of Aug. 27, 2010):

True                 1
Mostly True      1
Half True          3
Barely True      4
False               5
Pants on Fire   3

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by patrick chappatte, the international herald tribune

Democratie begint op school. Op Amerikaanse scholen zijn er al verkiezingen voor klassevertegenwoordigers vanaf tien jaar. Gekozen worden een voorzitter, een vice-voorzitter, een secretaris en dan helemaal onderaan het JdeWitje, de reporter.
Ook de bestrijding van rassendiscriminatie begint op school. Hoe ver Amerika daarmee is gevorderd blijkt uit deze school in Mississippi. Het ras van de verschillende klassevertegenwoordigers staat bij de verkiezingen van te voren vast.

Only white kids can run for President in Mississippi school  

With the election of President Barack Obama, the country heralded the coming of an age in which an African-American could overcome significant historical prejudice to ascend to the presidency. But while the country celebrates this collective step forward, a Nettleton, Mississippi public school is taking a clear step back. According to Nettleton Middle School’s rules, children running for certain class officer posts must meet a specific race requirement: to be president, the child must be white.
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Heel toepasselijk citeerde president Bush eens in een toespraak Graham Greene’s klassieke Vietnam-boek ‘The Quiet American’. Dat boek gaat over hoe de weg naar de hel geplaveid is met goede bedoelingen. En Irak is niet anders dan Vietnam, meent ook Glenn Greenwald.

De Engelse historicus H. Arthur Scott Trask in 2003.
“Uit het boek blijkt hoe weinig Amerikanen hebben geleerd van de geschiedenis. Hoe hun Messiaanse idee over democratie niet is veranderd in vijftig jaar. Onwetende, arrogante Amerikanen zoals Pyle, in Greene’s boek, storten zich op de wereld om die te verbeteren maar laten slechts een spoor van lijken, verminkte kinderen, verwoeste landen en nieuwe, meer verbeten vijanden achter. Hoe lang moet de wereld dit moorddadige idealisme nog tolereren?

President Bush, die zich heeft gedrukt voor de militaire dienst in Vietnam, zei verder in zijn speech voor de Veterans of Foreign Wars, dat de les van Vietnam is dat ‘we ons niet terug moeten trekken uit Irak’.

Amerikaans historicus Robert Dallek:
Het is niet te bevatten, welke onzin hier door de president wordt uitgekraamd. We zijn tien jaar in Vietnam geweest. We hebben meer bommen op dat land gegooid dan in de hele Tweede Wereldoorlog. Er zijn 58.700 Amerikanen gesneuveld. En we konden de Vietnamezen niet onze wil opleggen.
Wat suggereert Bush? Dat we niet hard genoeg hebben gevochten, niet lang genoeg zijn gebleven, niet genoeg bommen hebben gegooid? Dat is nonsens, een verdraaiing van de werkelijkheid.
Nu zijn we langer in Irak, dan we gevochten hebben in de Tweede Wereldoorlog. Het is een ramp. Dit is niets anders dan een cynische poging van Bush de schuld bij de tegenstanders van de oorlog te leggen. Maar deze ramp is het gevolg van de invasie, niet van de terugtocht.”

The “nobody-could-have-known” excuse and Iraq

The predominant attribute of American elites is a refusal to take responsibility for any failures. The favored tactic for accomplishing this evasion is the “nobody-could-have-known” excuse. Each time something awful occurs — the 9/11 attack, the Iraq War, the financial crisis, the breaking of levees in New Orleans, the general ineptitude and lawlessness of the Bush administration — one is subjected to an endless stream of excuse-making from those responsible, insisting that there was no way they “could have known” what was to happen: ”I don’t think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile,” Condoleezza Rice infamously said on May 16, 2002, despite multiple FBI and intelligence documents warning of exactly that. One finds identical excuses for each contemporary American disaster. Robert Gibbs just invoked the same false excuse: that “nobody” knew the depth of the financial and unemployment crisis early last year.
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by pavel constantin, romania

A new Newsweek poll has found that a majority of Republicans believe President Obama “sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” Only 33 percent of Republicans said the “allegation” was “probably not true,” while 38 percent said it was probably true and 14 percent said it was “definitely true.”

What is the Republican Party going to do when they do indeed take either the Senate or the House. A preview of coming attractions:

Republican pollster Dick Morris told conservative political activists that newly elected Republicans should shut down the government next year. Morris said the party must elect lawmakers who will stand up and say “No” to President Obama’s requests for more government spending and predicted a repeat of how Republicans forced a shutdown under President Clinton after they won control of Congress. “There’s going to be a government shutdown, just like in ‘95 and ‘96 but we’re going to win it this time and I’ll be fightin’ on your side.”

De Democraten staan er uitzonderlijk slecht voor in de tussentijdse verkiezingen. Veel progressieven zijn kwaad op Barack Obama omdat hij steeds maar weer zijn best doet om het een paar gematigde Republikeinen naar de zin te maken, in plaats van te vechten voor de idealen van de vooruitstrevende mensen die op hem hebben gestemd.
Het is moeilijk te geloven dat de Amerikanen bij de verkiezingen in november de macht in de gekozen volksvertegenwoordiging zal teruggeven aan de Republikeinen. Toch is dat heel goed mogelijk, als je de onderstaande Gallup Poll moet geloven. En dan ook nog aan een Grand Old Party (GOP) in één van haar meest primitieve vormen. De partij die de VS in het laatste decennium vrijwel heeft verwoest door een mengsel van extreme corruptie, roekeloze, zinloze oorlogen en wetteloosheid. Maar het is historisch bekend dat het mengsel van economische onderdrukking en het opstoken van racistische en etnische haatdragendheid zeer potent is.

The ten-point lead of the Republican Party is the widest in Gallup’s Poll history, and suggests serious Democratic losses in the November elections. If they were today, Democrats would lose the House. And the Senate is seriously in play. There’s no hyperbole here — the Dems seem to be heading for a crushing defeat this November.
And it’s worse than that even: [read on] (more…)

Dit is wel iets. Twee vliegtuigpassagiers - Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al-Soofi en Hezem al-Murisi - zijn op Schiphol gearresteerd met in hun bagage een lege shampo-fles waaraan horloges waren bevestigd en een lege medicijnfles waaraan mobiele telefoons waren bevestigd. Het lijkt daarmee op een oefening voor een bomaanslag. In flessen kan explosieve vloeistof worden vervoerd en horloges en mobiele telefoons kunnen worden gebruikt bij het exploderen van een bom. Ook zouden er messen en scharen in de koffers hebben gezeten.

Men arrested in the Netherlands may have been on a dry run

Two men held in the Netherlands may have been trying to test U.S. airport security by putting bottles with electronic devices attached in checked baggage, a U.S. law enforcement source said.
The men were taken into custody after landing in Amsterdam on a flight from Chicago, Illinois, Dutch prosecutors said. The suspicious items they had in their luggage were an empty shampoo bottle with watches attached to it and an empty bottle of a stomach medicine with mobile phones attached. [read on] (more…)

In probably the first of many court decisions blocking Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s frivolous legal theories, a Virginia judge halted the witchhunt of the global warming sceptic against respected climate change scientist Michael Mann.
The judge found that Cuccinelli failed to provide even a very rudimentary explanation of just what Professor Mann did “that was misleading, false or fraudulent in obtaining funds from the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
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Crowd counting isn’t an exact science. Still, we like to know how many honorable American patriots came to the ‘Restoring Honor’ rally organised by Fox News host Glenn Beck. Experts from CBS said the rally this weekend in Washington drew about 87,000 people.
The great man himself Glenn Beck said there were somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 white folks and 17 blacks.
The Republican politician Michele Bachmann claimed there were more than a million people.
So who is right? Again, it’s not an exact science, but a very good guess can be made based on the available evidence. Let’s start with a look at the three images of the rally:
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A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children’s hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.
As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in American taxpayer funds has been wasted — more than 10 percent of the some $50 billion the U.S. has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.
That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.