ShockedAwe.com

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has released its year-end list of the “top” 10 ethics scandals of 2008. Why isn’t the recent criminal complaint against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on the list? Well, for one, it’s not a Washington-centered problem. But Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, adds that while the Blagojevich case may be the flavor of the week right now, she thinks the scandals on her administration’s list will have more of an impact in the long run. Here they are:

1. “Unchecked Congressional Ethics”: CREW wants Congress to have a high-powered ethics office with subpoena power. MoJo Blog covered the vote on this earlier this year; we looked at this issue last year, too.

2. “No Guarantee that Bush Administration Records will be Properly Archived”: We’ve been keeping you up to date on the ongoing missing White House emails problem.

3. “Speech or Debate Clause”: Lots of politicians who are charged with crimes seek to have their indictments dismissed under the “Speech and Debate” clause of the Constitution, which they claim protects anything in their congressional office from being used against them in court on the grounds that its “legislative material.” Sloan says that this may be the biggest of the ten scandals her organization highlighted. If Blagocevich had been a member of congress, Sloan says, he would have been protected from much of US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation. Law enforcement would not have been able to tap his office phone or include anything he did in the course of his legislative work as part of an indictment, Sloan says. And both Democrats and Republicans are protecting this hard-line interpretation of the speech and debate clause. “This is a bipartisan issue of protecting members accused of corruption from investigation and prosecution,” Sloan says. Mother Jones covered this problem as early as 2006, with the raid on the offices of now ex-Louisiana Democratic Rep. William Jefferson.

4. “The Pay-to-Play Congress”: You’ve heard about this from John McCain and Barack Obama, who both talked about the power of earmarks to corrupt the legislative process. Every year, CREW notes the most egregious instances of earmark abuse, when campaign donors get earmarks from the politicians who they support. We wrote about corruption expert Lawrence Lessig’s Change Congress effort and will have more with Lessig next week.

5. “Enriching Family with Campaign Cash”: CREW has released two reports on this problem, “Family Affair - House” and “Family Affair - Senate.” We noted the most recent offender, Charlie Rangel.

6. “Controversial Presidential Pardons”: The president’s pardon power is essentially unlimited, and that has CREW worried about what President Bush will do with it before he leaves office. Elizabeth Gettelman wrote about the hypocrisy of commuting Scooter Libby’s sentence but ignoring Marion Jones. And Bruce Falconer asked if pardoning “all those involved in the application of what [the Bush] administration called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’” would be wise.

7. “VA Officials Intentionally Misdiagnosing PTSD”: CREW broke a story earlier this year about VA officials being pressed to misdiagnose Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a cost-cutting measure. In September, Bruce Falconer wrote a story for the print magazine about whether the Bush administration had “maxed out the military.”

8. “Bailout Oversight”: The government spent $700 billion and all you got was a few bank failures. We’ve covered the hearings and brought you the latest. Most recently, we looked at the Fannie/Freddie bailout and asked about Treasury’s blank check.

9. “Political Calculations Dictate Border Fence Placement”: Ray L. Hunt has land that falls on both sides of the border fence, but CREW says he’s getting special treatment because he’s a Bush “pioneer.” That kind of suction wouldn’t be unusual for Hunt: in July, Laura Rozen wrote about how Hunt seems to have almost unlimited access to the White House (and, in this case, to Kurdish oil.)

10. “A Politicized Bush Justice Department”: To prevent the abuse of the courts for political ends, the DOJ was traditionally the least-politicized of all the executive branch departments. That all changed when Bush took office. In 2007, Daniel Schulman was among the first to document how the conservative Federalist society may have influenced personnel decisions at the DOJ. Stephanie Mencimer covered another interesting aspect of this story in May when she examined the Justice Department’s reluctance to release documents from the 2002 GOP phone-jamming in New Hampshire. And Stephanie was also there for the most unsurprising moment of the DOJ politicization saga: Karl Rove’s failure to show up for a hearing on the subject in July.

It seems unlikely that the first year of the Obama administration will match up to the last year of the Bush administration in terms of ethics-scandal-potential. But we’ll be here, keeping an eye on everyone, Barack Obama included. Stick with us.

(You can find a PDF version of CREW’s full report on the “top ten” scandals here)

Pew Releases “Final Verdict” On Bush

As Bush’s reign of error winds down, his supporters are working hard to sugarcoat his legacy, first with the Bush legacy project, and then the “Speech Topper on the Bush Record.” But as Karl Rove and Bill Kristol recently discovered when arguing against the motion “Bush 43 is the worst president of the last 50 years,” it’s an uphill battle.

Pew’s “final verdict” shows that Americans aren’t falling for these last-ditch efforts. That is to say, only 24 percent of Americans currently approve of the administration, down from a high of 86 percent following 9/11.

Here are a few highlights, including how George W. compares to Clinton, Bush Sr., and Reagan:

• Nearly three-quarters of 18-29 year olds disapprove of President Bush, the most of any age group.
• More than one-third of respondents believe that Bush will go down in history as a poor president, as compared to Clinton (11 percent), Bush Sr. (4 percent), and Reagan (5 percent). (The options were outstanding, above average, average, below average, poor, and don’t know.)
• Approval of state and local government has declined 3 and 4 percent respectively since 2002. The federal government’s favorability rating has fallen 36 percent.
• 83 percent of Democrats, 68 percent of Independents, and 33 percent of Republicans believe the Bush administration will be best known for its failures. In 2001, only 13 percent of Democrats, 27 percent of Independents, and 43 percent of Republicans said the same about Clinton.
• Blacks disapprove of Bush more than whites by a fairly wide margin, 83 to 64 percent. And women disapprove more than men, 70 to 65 percent.
• Interestingly, college graduates are slightly more approving of Bush than Americans with no college education.

US Refuses to Ratify International Call to Decriminalize Homosexuality

This administration (1) doesn’t know how to play well with others, and (2) continues to makes a pathetic mockery of its own principles. We’re a country that launched a preemptive war, in part, to spread freedom. And yet, this:

Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.

In all, 66 of the U.N.’s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration — which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution.

Co-sponsored by France and the Netherlands, the declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. There was broad opposition from Muslim nations….

So why were we the only Western nation to opt out?

According to some of the declaration’s backers, U.S. officials expressed concern in private talks that some parts of the declaration might be problematic in committing the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.

Sure. Why would we sign an internationally supported declaration in favor of human rights? It would keep local landlords and private employers from discriminating. We can’t have that!

Rick Warren??

This one puzzles.

Rick Warren is the pastor of the California-based megachurch known as Saddleback and the author of super-bestseller The Purpose Driven Life. He wins plaudits from mainstream media types and Very Serious People because he is trying to expand the evangelical community’s priorities beyond the standard social issues. He wants to see more attention paid to poverty, climate change, AIDS, and human rights. That’s all well and good, but Warren still has many views that match the hardline right. He strongly supported Proposition 8. He considers stem cells “non-negotiable.” He compares abortion to the Holocaust. He has admitted the difference between between him and James Dobson is primarily “a matter of tone.” In a move that would make George Orwell proud, he just gave George W. Bush an “International Medal of P.E.A.C.E.”

And this is the guy Barack Obama has chosen to give the invocation at his inauguration? A man whose views stand in stark contrast to the ones held by the tens of millions of Americans who elected Obama?

I’m not the only one who is shocked. There is already a petition at whitehouse2.org that urges the President-elect to give this incredible privilege to one of the nation’s thousands and thousands of men and women of the cloth whose views match Obama’s, and those of the people who will have flown in from around the country to see the inauguration in person. Take a look.

Hilda Solis: A Nominee to Get Excited About

Quit yur bellyaching! Obama’s pick for Secretary of Labor is reportedly California Rep. Hilda Solis, the proud daughter of a union mom and union dad. In addition to a background as a management analyst at the Office of Management and Budget and a 100 percent rating from the AFL-CIO in 2007, Solis brings a reputation as one of Washington’s leading proponents of green jobs. Check out her commitment to working people, courtesy of Harold Meyerson:

In 1996, when she was a back-bencher (and the first Latina) in the California State Senate, Hilda Solis did something that no other political figure I known of had done before, or has done since: She took money out of her own political account to fund a social justice campaign. Under California law, the state minimum wage is set by the gubernatorially-appointed Industrial Welfare Commission, and California’s governors for the preceding 14 years, Republicans George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson, hadn’t exactly appointed members inclined to raise that wage. So Solis dipped into her own campaign treasury and came up with the money to fund the signature-gatherers to put a minimum wage hike initiative on the California ballot. The signature gatherers gathered the signatures, the measure was placed on the ballot, it passed handily in the next election, and California’s low-wage janitors and gardeners and fry and taco cooks, and millions like them, got a significant raise.

If you were to sketch an ideal Labor Secretary, you could hardly do much better. (Another example of how Obama has found diversity without sacrificing an ounce of expertise .)

Update: The Economist notes that with the Solis pick, the white-male quotient in Obama’s cabinet is under 50 percent.
Which State is the Most Corrupt?

In the wake of the Blagojevich scandal, we’ve heard a lot about how corrupt “Chicago politics” are. But what’s the real story? A pretty graph tells the tale:

Turns out that while Illinois is more corrupt than most states, it’s not Blagojevich but another allegedly-criminal Democrat, now-former Rep. William Jefferson, who comes from the most corrupt state in the union. That’s Louisiana, home to sometime GOP presidential aspirant Bobby Jindal. All four of the most corrupt states in the union are red states, and three are in the deep south. And the third-most corrupt state just reelected the Republicans’ leader in the senate, Mitch McConnell. Can we stop the ridiculous guilt-by-association game now? Just because a politician’s home state has a reputation (deserved or undeserved) for corruption doesn’t mean he or she is therefore also corrupt. Even if a sitting governor from the politician’s own party has just been arrested.

(Via Matt Yglesias)

The Rich and Corporations Carry the Tax Burden? Yeah, Right.

Kevin helped drive a stake through the heart of a favorite conservative trope last week when he put up a chart illustrating the effective tax rate on the rich and superrich. (Hint: It’s only slightly higher than the middle and upper middle classes.) This article should finish it off. Guess what the effective tax rate on Goldman Sachs, which made $2.8 billion in 2008, will be this year? One percent.

Poll: American Public Deeply at Odds with Rest of World

A new poll of more than 21,000 people in 21 countries shows that American impressions of the United States government’s behavior in the Middle East differ drastically from the impressions of the rest of the world. A majority of Americans (56 percent) believe that the US “shows respect” to the Muslim world, but just 16 percent of worldwide respondents feel this way. Exactly two-thirds of the world feels the United States acts disrespectfully toward the Islamic world. Roughly half who feel this way believe American disrespect is born out of “ignorance and insensitivity” and half say the disrespect is shown on purpose. Importantly, majorities in Iran, Egypt, and Pakistan believe the United States intentionally tries to humiliate Muslims, with near majorities of Palestinians, Turks, and Jordanians agreeing. (Looks like Karen Hughes didn’t accomplish all that much.)

American and worldwide opinion is similarly at odds on the question of America’s global military footprint. Seventy percent of Americans believe it is a good idea for US naval forces to be stationed in the Persian Gulf, but just 22 percent of the worldwide public agrees. Huge majorities in Gulf states disagree. Full numbers can be found at worldpublicopinion.org.

Cheney Spinning His Way Out the Door (on Gitmo and Torture)

In his first–dare we say it?–farewell interview, Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl that he’d like to keep Guantanamo open until the “end of the war with terror.” How long will that be? “Well, nobody knows,” the veep said. To defend his hold-’em-forever stand, Cheney referred to the much-repeated claim that many of those released from Guantanamo have returned to terrorism. He said:

We’ve had, as I recall now–and these are rough numbers, I’d want to check it–but, say, approximately 30 of these folks who’ve been held in Guantanamo, been released, and ended up back on the battlefield again, and we’ve encountered them a second time around. They’ve either been killed or captured in further conflicts with our forces.

This figure of 30 back-to-the-battlefied Gitmo vets has been used by the administration and its supporters for some time now. One problem: it seems to be hype.

Last year, researchers at Seton Hall University School of Law researched this contention, examining the extensive records covering those who have been released from Guantanamo, and they found that the data did not support this claim:

The Department of Defense has publicly insisted that “just short of thirty” former Guantánamo detainees have “returned” to the battlefield, where they have been re-captured or killed, but to date the Department has described at most fifteen (15) possible recidivists, and has identified only seven (7) of these individuals by name. According to the data provided by the Department of Defense:

• at least eight (8) of the fifteen (15) individuals alleged by the Government to have returned to the fight” are accused of nothing more than speaking critically of the Government’s detention policies;

• ten (10) of the individuals have neither been re-captured nor killed by anyone;

• and of the five (5) individuals who are alleged to have been re-captured or killed, the names of two (2) do not appear on the list of individuals who have at any time been detained at Guantánamo, and the remaining three (3) include one (1) individual who was killed in an apartment complex in Russia by local authorities and one (1) who is not listed among former Guantánamo detainees but who, after his death, has been alleged to have been detained under a different name.

Thus, the data provided by the Department of Defense indicates that every public statement made by Department of Defense officials regarding the number of detainees who have been released and thereafter killed or re-captured on the battlefield was false.

That did not stop Cheney.

Also in the interview, Cheney exclaimed, “We do not torture.” Yet Cheney acknowledged that he believes that waterboarding is “appropriate.” Cheney must not accept the definition of torture put forth by national intelligence director Mike McConnell: “Is it excruciatingly painful to the point of forcing someone to say something because of the pain?” McConnell also noted, “If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful. Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.” Cheney apparently is made of sterner stuff.

As for regrets, he said, “Oh, not a lot, at this stage…I think we’ve done pretty well.”

Paranoia at Big Coal Headquarters

There’s an awful lot that is crazy about this speech by Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the fourth largest coal company in the country, and member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce board of directors. He says “greeniacs” are trying to take over the country. He says that people who disagree with his retrograde views on global warming and energy (climate change doesn’t exist, duh) are “communists” and “atheists.” He compares the editors of a newspaper that has criticized him to Osama bin Laden.

But my favorite part is when Blankenship suggests that somehow third world countries have got themselves in their unfortunate states by trying too hard to conserve energy and live sustainably.

I have spent quite a bit of time in Russia and China and India in the last year or two, and I can tell you, that’s the first stage. You go from having your own car to carpooling to, you know, riding the bus to mass transit. You eventually get to where you’re walking. And your apartments go from being nice apartments and homes with your own bathroom, to sharing bathrooms and kitchens with four families.

Whatever you say, chief.

Department of Energy Making it Harder to FOIA Bush-Era Docs

As President Bush prepares to leave office, his appointees in the executive branch agencies seem to be doing their best to cover his tracks. With President-elect Barack Obama set to announce his choice of Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Chu to head the Department of Energy later today, that department is trying to make it harder for the public to dig into its activities. Secrecy News reports that the Bush DOE wants to remove a guideline that encourages it to release information under the FOIA that it’s not legally required to release if doing so would serve the “public interest.” The likely result would be that the DOE would never release information unless under a legal mandate, echoing a policy former Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft implemented at the Justice Department, which actually encouraged withholding information whenever there was a “sound legal basis” for doing so. Secrecy News, which is run by the Federation of American Scientists, has FAS’ comments on the proposed regulation:

[T]here is a widespread and well-founded expectation that the incoming Obama Administration will rescind the Ashcroft FOIA policy and define a more forthcoming disclosure policy. In light of that probable scenario, I would urge DOE to cancel its proposed revision of [the public interest balancing test], or else to suspend action on it for six months while the new Administration prepares new government-wide FOIA guidance.

Seeing as the Bush administration won’t extend the courtesy of allowing the Obamas to move into the official White House guest house a few days early, it seems unlikely that DOE will hold off on its proposed revision out of amity toward the incoming administration. But I guess it’s worth a shot.

Methane Leaking Into Arctic Ocean

The carbon pool beneath the Arctic Ocean is leaking. A study on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf found an increase in methane bubbles rising from chimneys on the seafloor in 2008. In fact more than 1,000 measurements registered the highest dissolved methane concentrations ever seen in the summer Arctic Ocean. Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

These new data from the International Arctic Research Center indicate the underwater permafrost is thawing in one of two (or both) ways. First, thawing permafrost initiates the decomposition of previously-frozen organic material, releasing methane and carbon dioxide. Second, ice-like methane hydrates trapped underneath the permafrost seep out when the permafrost thaws.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a shallow continental shelf stretching 900 miles into the Arctic Ocean from Siberia. It’s known to be a year-round source of methane to the globe’s atmosphere. But until recently scientists believed that much of its carbon pool was safely insulated by underwater permafrost. Not anymore. Now the fuse is lit on the methane time bomb. . . . And we’re still talking about drilling for new sources of oil? WTF?

What Environmentalists Really Think of Ken Salazar

As you may have read, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) has been tapped as President Obama’s Secretary of the Interior. And as we’ve reported previously, the Interior secretary post is a major one in terms of the nation’s environmental health. The Interior (and by default, its secretary) governs the management of public lands, national parks, oil and gas resources, and even the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey.

Environmentalists were pushing for Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a staunch conservationist. So what’s their consensus on Salazar? You can read their various statements, below. Overall, they seem cautiously optimistic. But then, it would be hard not to be buoyed by Salazar when you’re comparing him to predecessors like mining advocate and former chemical company lobbyist Gale Norton.

Center for Biological Diversity: “He is a right-of-center Democrat who often favors industry and big agriculture… He is very unlikely to bring significant change to the scandal-plagued Department of Interior. It’s a very disappointing choice…” –Kieran Suckling, executive director, via New York Times.

Sierra Club: “He has been a very vocal critic of the Bush administration’s reckless approach to rampant land development in the West.” –Josh Dorner, a spokesman, via the UK Guardian.

Wilderness Society: “He’s going to be an honest broker… He is trying to manage conflicts in a way that reaches resolution. I’m not sure he’s articulated a grand vision for the public lands.” –Bill Meadows, president, via Washington Post.

“On a personal level, our experience has been that there is a genuine openness to [Salazar] considering different ideas..” –David Albersworth, senior policy analyst, via Rocky Mountain News.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: Salazar is a “sympathetic soul” who will be a refreshing change because “the past eight years with the Bush administration have felt like a battle, then it became total despair.” –Karen Schambach, California coordinator, via the Los Angeles Times.

“Salazar has a disturbingly weak conservation record, particularly on energy development, global warming, endangered wildlife and protecting scientific integrity,” –Daniel R. Patterson, southwest regional director, via New York Times.

Environmental Working Group: “We’re encouraged by it… he recognizes the importance of the food programs, and he’s very good on conservation.” –Ken Cook, president, via the Washington Post.

Environment Colorado: “We hope he continues to play a role in insuring that, as we develop our mineral rights in these incredibly sensitive areas, we require industry to put in place safeguards that protect our health, environment, water and air quality,” –Pam Kiely, program director, via New York Times

The Gift of Nature

Walking in a park in any season or even viewing pictures of nature helps improve memory and attention by 20 percent. All it takes is 30 minutes. Even when it’s cold. Even when we don’t enjoy it. The study by U of Michigan researchers found that effects of interacting with nature are similar to meditating.

Participants were sent on walking routes through urban streets as well as through a botanical garden and arboretum. The city strolls provided no memory boost but the parks improved short-term memory. Interestingly, the test subjects didn’t need to enjoy the walks. They received the same cognitive benefits when it was 80 degrees and sunny as when it was 25 degrees in winter.

Participants were also tested sitting inside and looking at pictures of either downtown scenes or nature scenes. The results were the same: about 20 percent improvement in memory and attention scores from looking at photos of nature.

The study appears in Psychological Science and dovetails with some of the researchers’ earlier work suggesting that people will be most satisfied with their lives when their environment supports three basic needs: the ability to understand and explore; the ability to make a difference; and ability to feel competent and effective.

Best holiday present? Take someone out into nature. Truly the gift that gives forever. Or at least for 20 percent longer.

China Jumps to Hybrid

China’s first mass-produced hybrid electric car hit the market today. The car is made by BYD Auto and backed by Warren Buffett who owns 9.9 percent of the company. The F3DM (if you say so, C-3PO) can be charged from powerpoints at home or at electric car charging stations. That’s a first for mass produced. The hybrid runs 62 miles on a full battery and costs under $22,000 dollars.

BYD Auto says it doesn’t expect the F3DM will succeed with Chinese customers initially because of the high price, reports AFP. Instead the company is focusing on sales to company fleets. The strategy is to leapfrog past traditional cars—where Chinese technology lags badly—straight to hybrids.

Smart strategy. Remind me again why exactly we’re bailing out our own loser car companies? BYD already specialized in producing rechargeable batteries and only started making cars in 2003 when it bought a bankrupt state-owned car company. Since then it’s beaten Toyota and General Motors to the punch as those companies won’t launch home-chargeable hybrids cars before 2009 and 2010 respectively. Can’t we leapfrog past the traditional car companies straight to hyperdrive mass transit? Can’t we, as the Chinese say, transform the current mass chaos into mass opportunity?

Can California’s Global Warming Plan Survive Its Economic Crisis?

On December 11 California approved a landmark global warming plan that would cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a 30 percent reduction. Meanwhile, the state is suffering through a fiscal crisis that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who supports the global warming plan, describes as “financial Armageddon.” The same day that California approved the climate measure, the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle ran a giant Schwarzenegger block quote:

Every second, the state is losing $470, every minute, $28,000, and every hour $1.7 million and every day $40 million. That is approximately more than $1 billion a month if legislators don’t act [to pass a new budget].

The California Air Resources Board, which approved the global warming plan, estimates that it would actually have “an overall positive effect on the economy” by spurring energy efficiency and technological innovation. However, the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Analysis Office questioned that estimate, saying that the evaluation of some costs and benefits was “inconsistent and incomplete.” As U.S. Congress prepares to debate its own climate bill in the near future, expect Republicans to argue that the California climate plan is a financial sink hole; in response, Democrats should note that the benefits of energy efficiency and technology investment will take awhile to materialize. The same could be said of bailing out Wall Street and the automakers, and, so far, that hasn’t stopped us.

Powered By Java: Me and My Car

Looking for a spare 340 million gallons of biodiesel? Waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel for cars and trucks. Spent grounds contain 11-20 percent oil by weight—about the same as rapeseed, palm, and soybean oil. Growers already produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee yearly and the spent grounds generally wind up in the trash.

To see if that oil from those grounds is worth putting into your diesel tank, researchers from the U of Nevada collected separated the oil from the grounds and used an inexpensive process to convert 100 percent of it into biodiesel.

The result: a coffee-based fuel that actually smells like java. Mmmm. Plus it’s more stable than traditional biodiesel due to the coffee’s high antioxidant content. The solids left over from the conversion process can be converted to ethanol or used as compost. The researchers estimate the process could make a profit of >$8 million a year in the U.S. alone. Worldwide it could produce 340 million gallons of biodiesel annually. The team plans to develop a pilot plant in the next eight months.

The study appears in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Drink it up. Wake up your car.

Man-Made Chemicals Reduce Animals’ Masculinity

This week, the British organization CHEM Trust, which is financially supported by WWF-UK and Greenpeace, published a report (.pdf) reviewing scientific literature on the reproductive health of wildlife in contact with chemical pollutants. These pollutants include the usual suspects: phthalates, bisphenol A, PCBs, DDT, atrazine, etc. All of these chemicals have been covered extensively by Mother Jones, such as in the current issue’s “Let’s Go Europe,” about European chemical regulations.

In a press release, the report’s author, Gwynne Lyons, commented that, “Man-made chemicals are clearly damaging the basic male tool-kit.” The report concludes:

Some of the most prevalent effects reported in male wildlife, which are associated with pollutants, are related to genital disruption (GD). GD includes an array of manifestations. Notable amongst these are: intersex features (such as egg tissue in the testes of the male); small phallus; small testes; undescended testes or other obvious structural defects of the male reproductive tract; or ambiguous genitals.

And the human implications?

New EPA Fugitive List = Pretty Useless

The EPA  released a new, “America’s Most Wanted”-style list of environmental fugitives on December 10. Many of the fugitives, who have been charged with everything from “illegal discharge of hazardous pollutants” to “illegal asbestos removal,” are suspected to have fled to countries like Syria and Denmark. Grant Nakayama, an official in the EPA’s enforcement division, said in a press release that “Putting this information on the EPA’s website will increase the number of ‘eyes’ looking for environmental fugitives.”

While portraying people who commit environmental crimes as serious criminals is definitely laudable, EPA enforcement has been almost completely toothless under the Bush administration. You gotta wonder if, even if they the EPA does get information on these fugitives, they’d actually try to convict them. According to the Associated Press, in 2008 the EPA opened 100 fewer criminal enforcement cases than they did in 2004. In 2006, it began shutting down its research libraries. As one senior EPA scientist, Wes Wilson, told us in the current issue, the EPA has moved far from its investigative past. “Now we sit around and basically do nothing,” he said.

Not only is the EPA investigating fewer cases, it’s getting political interference on the cases it has pursued. According to a recently retired EPA official, the DOJ may have improperly shut down an investigation of a huge 2006 BP oil spill. Maybe the EPA is just treading water waiting for an Obama-related reorganization, but I couldn’t help but feel the list is a waste of resources without including more headshots of CEOs from oil and energy companies. Though CEOs aren’t fugitives, when it comes down to it, their corporations are the ones doing the major damage, not guys like Alessandro Giordano who “illegally imported automobiles that did not meet the United States emission standards.” For my taxpayer dollar, I’d prefer to see less energy spent looking for small-time criminals abroad, and more effort on catching those really big fish here at home.

Cell Phones Fry Memory

Rats exposed to mobile phone radiation for two hours a week for more than a year suffered memory loss. The findings may be related to earlier findings that microwave radiation from cell phones affects the blood-brain barrier.

The team from Lund University in Sweden previously found that albumin, a protein that acts as a transport molecule in the blood, leaks into brain tissue when lab animals are exposed to mobile phone radiation. Now they find damaged nerve cells in the cerebral cortex and in the hippocampus, the memory centers of the brain. Although the albumin leakage occurs directly after radiation, the nerve damage takes four to eight weeks to manifest.

Furthermore, the team discovered alterations in the activity of a large number of genes after cell phone radiation—not in individual genes but in groups that are functionally related. “We now see that things happen to the brains of lab animals after cell phone radiation. The next step is to try to understand why this happens,” says Henrietta Nittby. She has a cell phone herself, but never holds it to her ear, using hands-free equipment instead. . . The lab animals, lacking opposable thumbs, have no choice. Oh, wait, aren’t we all lab animals, in our own special way?

Food News Roundup

As I was browsing the internet and reading e-mails today, I came across a number of interesting food-related headlines. Instead of blogging them all, I’ve put them in an easily digestible (no pun intended) format, below:

New Palin Expenses Are… Curious

Politico reports that the RNC spent an additional $30,000 on clothes and accessories for Sarah Palin and her family late in the campaign, in addition to the $150,000 previously reported. Take a look at where the money was spent:

The RNC’s post-Election Day report documented another $30,000 at outlets that read like a suburban shopping directory.

Dick’s Sporting Goods, The Limited, Foot Locker, Wal-Mart, Toys R Us and Victoria’s Secret are all listed in between the expected payments for media buys, direct mail and polling.

Sporting goods? Toys? Lingerie? In what conceivable way could these expenses be related to the campaign? I think it’s a bit excessive that Palin’s traveling makeup artist got paid $68,400 for roughly three months of work, and that her hair stylist got paid more than $42,000 for about two, but at least those expenses have a bearing on how Palin looked in rallies, interviews, and other campaign-related activities. What does Victoria Secret sell that was relevant to the campaign?

Parting Shots: Bush Administration Reverses Rule Protecting Grand Canyon

In an 11th hour move, the Bush Administration today reversed an old federal rule that would have allowed Congress to take action to protect the Grand Canyon from a rash of new uranium mining claims. Driven by renewed national interest in nuclear power, the number of uranium claims staked within five miles of the Grand Canyon has increased from 10 in 2003 to 1,181 as of this October. Rampant mining near the Canyon would threaten the water quality of the Colorado River, potentially jeopardizing the drinking water supply of millions of residents in Las Vegas and Southern California. Prompted in part by the concerns of local water agencies, in June the House Committee on Natural Resources invoked its right under the Federal Land Management and Policy Act to withdraw the mining claims. But the Bureau of Land Management refused to implement the order, and the Bush Administration’s rule change today gives it official authority to thumb its nose at Congress.

Ultimately, Bush’s move will probably do more to increase his radioactivity with voters than it will to heat up the tap water in Las Vegas; the Obama Administration will certainly reverse Bush’s reversal. But more important, the Grand Canyon flap underscores the hopeless antiquity of the nation’s mining laws. The General Mining Law of 1872, which was written by Nevada’s first senator and signed into law by President Grant, enshrines mining as the “highest and best use” on 350 million acres of federal land. It also allows mining companies to cart off public minerals without paying a cent of royalties. Efforts to reform the law began almost as soon as it passed and have failed at ever turn, including this year, when a reform bill was to have been introduced in the Senate but wasn’t. But with Bush-era environmental horrors fresh on the mind, and public coffers emptied, expect that to change in the coming session.

Blackwater Shooters to be Tried Under Obscure Drug Law

Since September 2007, when Blackwater operators opened fire in a Baghdad traffic circle, killing 17 Iraqi civilians and wounding 24 more, the Justice Department has been struggling to build a criminal case. The challenge is indeed unique: Blackwater employees in Iraq are, like all other foreign contractors in the country, immune to Iraqi law. (This now stands to change under the new “Status of Forces” agreement, which strips contractors of their legal shield.) Because the Blackwater shooters were operating under a State Department contract, they also fall outside the jurisdiction of the US Code of Military Justice, which applies only to military contractors. US criminal and civil law also has yet to catch up to the reality of armed US contractors operating in conflict areas, and the few provisions that do cover such work need further clarification. In essence, the Blackwater operators who opened fire that day fell through the legal and regulatory cracks, effectively rendering them immune to charges of murder.

Well, almost. News reports indicate that the Justice Department, as early as Monday, could charge between three and six Blackwater contractors for the September 2007 shootings under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. The law calls for mandatory 30-year prison terms for the use of machine guns in violent crimes. The law was created in response to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, but can apparently be applied more broadly, or so federal prosecutors will argue.

KBR Subcontractor Keeping 1,000 Asian Workers in Warehouse

I’m no expert in human trafficking, but this strikes me as worthy of criminal punishment. McClatchy:

About 1,000 Asian men who were hired by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to the U.S. military have been confined for as long as three months in windowless warehouses near the Baghdad airport without money or a place to work.

Najlaa International Catering Services, a subcontractor to KBR, an engineering, construction and services company, hired the men, who’re from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. On Tuesday, they staged a march outside their compound to protest their living conditions….

The laborers said they paid middlemen more than $2,000 to get to Iraq for jobs that they were told would earn them $600 to $800 a month. Some of the men took out loans to cover the fees.

“They promised us the moon and stars,” said Davidson Peters, 42, a Sri Lankan. “While we are here, wives have left their husbands and children have been shut out of their schools” because money for the families has dried up. The men live in three warehouses with long rows of bunk beds crammed tightly together. Reporters who tried to get a better glimpse inside were ushered away by armed guards.

One man held in the warehouse said there are “about 12″ toilets for the 1,000 men. Because of this news report, the Kuwaiti subcontractor has said it will return the men to their home countries and give them back pay. The men, unsurprisingly, are skeptical.

Seriously Bad Week for KBR

The above is pretty bad. And also, there’s this:

The lawsuit also accuses KBR of shipping ice in mortuary trucks that “still had traces of body fluids and putrefied remains in them when they were loaded with ice. This ice was served to U.S. forces.”

If you think that’s bad, read the full story at Army Times. There’s more, and it’s all horrifying.
Obama’s Coattails

The day after election day, when it looked like Democrats were going to pick up just 15 seats in the House and five seats in the Senate (remember, Oregon and Alaska were won late), political pundits wondered if Obama had shorter coattails than the hype surrounding him would suggest.

The results from yesterday’s Senate run-off in Georgia, which Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss won by a substantial margin over Democratic challenger Jim Martin, make the case that Obama’s coattails were quite strong, at least in certain areas. Here’s MSNBC’s First Read:

Consider that during the general election, [Martin] trailed Saxby Chambliss (R) by just three percentage points, 49.8%-46.8%, with a third-party candidate garnering more than 3%. But in yesterday’s run-off, with 97% of precincts reporting, Chambliss won by 14 points, 57%-43%, preventing Democrats from obtaining a filibuster-proof 60 seats. How many House or Senate Democrats who believe they won because of Obama coattails — especially in states like Alabama, North Carolina, and Virginia — saw the run-off result and said, “Uh, oh. 2010 is going to be tough”?

Argument for Obama’s coattails: Two consecutive “wave” elections for the same party are incredibly rare, and the Democrats pulled the trick off in 2008 with Obama at the top of the ticket. Argument against Obama’s coattails: It’s possibly that both Obama and the Democratic wave in Congress were the product of the same anti-Bush and anti-Republican sentiment. Argument that it doesn’t matter: Obama has the majorities he needs to govern (for the next two years at least) and won by enough in the popular vote to declare a mandate. Coattails or no, it’s time to get to work.

Auto Execs Starting to Get It?

Bad PR works wonders, apparently. Just two weeks after incurring public wrath for flying private jets to Washington in order to beg for bailout money, Detroit’s top dogs are returning this week (driving hybrid cars to get here) with a plan to make amends:

Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Alan Mulally plans to tell Congress he is accelerating his company’s development of hybrid and electric vehicles and is willing to cut his salary to $1 a year if Ford uses any federal funds.

General Motors Corp. is expected to focus on efforts to lighten the company’s heavy debt load and consolidate or sell at least one of its eight automotive brands, most likely Saab, people familiar with the matter said. GM CEO Rick Wagoner also will take a $1 salary, those people said….

In a phone interview Monday, Mr. Mulally said Ford will explain to Congress it is rushing to launch new hybrids and electric vehicles by 2011, including a battery-powered commercial van and compact sedan. A plug-in electric vehicle that can be recharged from a standard electrical outlet should follow in 2012, he said.

In a separate interview, Ford Chairman William Ford Jr. said the company is looking beyond survival to opportunity. “We want to come blasting out as a global, green, high-tech company that’s exactly where the country and the Obama administration want us to head,” he said.

There is serious reason to doubt Bill Ford on this issue — he has long talked a good game on environmental matters while his company continued to mass produce gas-guzzling over-sized vehicles. At this point, though, reality appears to have finally penetrated the auto executives’ thick skulls. No more private jets, no more massive salaries, no more ignoring the market for hybrids, and hopefully, no more business plans that produce SUVs and little else.

Obama Takes Initial Open Government Step

Who here is interested in the copyright standards of the Obama transition’s web-based information, documents, and videos? Everybody, right? Excellent.

Open government advocates are cheering the fact that the Obama transition team has changed the copyright restriction on Change.gov to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License, which allows users to grab content off Change.gov, copy it, remix it, and distribute it without limitation. All users have to do is attribute the content to Change.gov. It is the freest possible version of a copyright and a step in the right direction.

But there’s more to be done, of course. The open government community is pushing for a couple more concessions from the Obama people, the primary one being that content needs to be practically accessible in addition to legally accessible. That is to say, it matters little if content on Change.gov can be remixed and modified and disseminated, if the coding of the content doesn’t allow it to be copied in the first place. Here’s an explanation from open-government.us, where you can find more ideas for a truly open transition:

Citizens should be able to download transition-related content in a way that makes it simple to share, excerpt, remix, or redistribute. This is an essential digital freedom.

For example, while content may be posted on a particular site such as YouTube, because YouTube does not authorize videos on its site to be downloaded, transition-created content should also be made available on a site that does permit downloads. Just as it would be unacceptable for government websites to block the copying-and-pasting of publicly accessible text, making video accessible in a manner that does not allow easy or authorized excerpting and reuse blocks access and engagement.

We would therefore strongly encourage the transition to assure that the material it has licensed freely be practically accessible freely as well. There are a host of services — such as blip.tv — which not only enable users to download freely licensed content, but which also explicitly marks the content with freedom it carries.

We’ll see how far Obama wants to go in this regard; sacrificing control for the sake of openness is not something the executive branch has been good at of late, and Obama need not take drastic steps to improve on the behavior of his predecessor. But the fact that the Obama team seems cognizant of and amenable to the priorities of the open government community signals good things for the upcoming administration. Says Larry Lessig, “I’m glad the thought in this administration led to the right conclusion, so quickly, and in the midst of so much else going on.”

Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, is a date that will live in fame (the opposite of infamy) forever. If the election of our first African-American president didn’t stir you, if it didn’t leave you teary-eyed and proud of your country, there’s something wrong with you.

But will the election also mark a turning point in the actual substance of policy? Can Barack Obama really usher in a new era of progressive policies? Yes, he can.

Right now, many commentators are urging Mr. Obama to think small. Some make the case on political grounds: America, they say, is still a conservative country, and voters will punish Democrats if they move to the left. Others say that the financial and economic crisis leaves no room for action on, say, health care reform.

Let’s hope that Mr. Obama has the good sense to ignore this advice.

About the political argument: Anyone who doubts that we’ve had a major political realignment should look at what’s happened to Congress. After the 2004 election, there were many declarations that we’d entered a long-term, perhaps permanent era of Republican dominance. Since then, Democrats have won back-to-back victories, picking up at least 12 Senate seats and more than 50 House seats. They now have bigger majorities in both houses than the G.O.P. ever achieved in its 12-year reign.

Bear in mind, also, that this year’s presidential election was a clear referendum on political philosophies — and the progressive philosophy won.

Maybe the best way to highlight the importance of that fact is to contrast this year’s campaign with what happened four years ago. In 2004, President Bush concealed his real agenda. He basically ran as the nation’s defender against gay married terrorists, leaving even his supporters nonplussed when he announced, soon after the election was over, that his first priority was Social Security privatization. That wasn’t what people thought they had been voting for, and the privatization campaign quickly devolved from juggernaut to farce.

This year, however, Mr. Obama ran on a platform of guaranteed health care and tax breaks for the middle class, paid for with higher taxes on the affluent. John McCain denounced his opponent as a socialist and a “redistributor,” but America voted for him anyway. That’s a real mandate.

What about the argument that the economic crisis will make a progressive agenda unaffordable?

Well, there’s no question that fighting the crisis will cost a lot of money. Rescuing the financial system will probably require large outlays beyond the funds already disbursed. And on top of that, we badly need a program of increased government spending to support output and employment. Could next year’s federal budget deficit reach $1 trillion? Yes.

But standard textbook economics says that it’s O.K., in fact appropriate, to run temporary deficits in the face of a depressed economy. Meanwhile, one or two years of red ink, while it would add modestly to future federal interest expenses, shouldn’t stand in the way of a health care plan that, even if quickly enacted into law, probably wouldn’t take effect until 2011.

Beyond that, the response to the economic crisis is, in itself, a chance to advance the progressive agenda.

Now, the Obama administration shouldn’t emulate the Bush administration’s habit of turning anything and everything into an argument for its preferred policies. (Recession? The economy needs help — let’s cut taxes on rich people! Recovery? Tax cuts for rich people work — let’s do some more!)

But it would be fair for the new administration to point out how conservative ideology, the belief that greed is always good, helped create this crisis. What F.D.R. said in his second inaugural address — “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics” — has never rung truer.

And right now happens to be one of those times when the converse is also true, and good morals are good economics. Helping the neediest in a time of crisis, through expanded health and unemployment benefits, is the morally right thing to do; it’s also a far more effective form of economic stimulus than cutting the capital gains tax. Providing aid to beleaguered state and local governments, so that they can sustain essential public services, is important for those who depend on those services; it’s also a way to avoid job losses and limit the depth of the economy’s slump.

So a serious progressive agenda — call it a new New Deal — isn’t just economically possible, it’s exactly what the economy needs.

The bottom line, then, is that Barack Obama shouldn’t listen to the people trying to scare him into being a do-nothing president. He has the political mandate; he has good economics on his side. You might say that the only thing he has to fear is fear itself.

By Alan Cowell

PARIS: From the front lines of Iraq to more genteel spots like Harry’s Bar in Paris, the election of Barack Obama opened a floodgate for the world’s hope that a new U.S. leader would redeem promises of change, rewrite the political script and provide a kind of leadership that would erase the bitterness of the Bush years.

Whether it was because of Obama’s youth, race, message or manner, some European leaders abandoned diplomatic niceties to compete for extravagance in their praise, while others outside the United States - fascinated by an election that had been scrutinized around the globe - reached for their most telling comparisons.

“There is the feeling that for the first time since Kennedy, America has a different kind of leader,” said Alejandro Saks, an Argentine script writer in Buenos Aires. Or, as Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of political science in Istanbul, put it, “The U.S. needs a facelift and he’s the one who can give it.”

There were some glaring departures from the feel-good mood. One in particular illustrated the challenges that will test the president-elect: President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia chose the day to lambast the United States and threaten new missile deployments.

The final moments of the election were covered in obsessive detail far from the United States. In Australia, radio stations interrupted their shows to broadcast the Obama acceptance speech. In Berlin, newspapers printed special editions.

Perhaps one of the most poignant accolades came from Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, who said in a letter to Obama: “Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.”

Significantly, though, among U.S. troops in Iraq, the hope seemed tinged with skepticism that change in the White House would not automatically mean change in American doctrines that have meant deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s not like even if Obama is elected we’ll up and leave,” said Specialist James Real, 31, of Butte, Montana, as soldiers watched the returns on television at Forward Operating Base Falcon in Iraq.

Indeed, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Iraq itself did not “expect that much change in the American policies toward Iraq. Any changes won’t be made in one night.”

In Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are also deployed in an increasingly bitter war, the election brought a rebuke .

“Our demand is to have no civilian casualties in Afghanistan. The fight against terrorism cannot be won by the bombardment of our villages,” said President Hamid Karzai, referring to a string of coalition airstrikes that have caused civilian casualties.

For many outsiders, Obama’s victory raised expectations that a new administration would seek new relationships across the globe.

“I think he can restore the image of America around the world, especially after Bush got us into two wars,” said David Charlot, 28, a lawyer with French and American citizenship who was among a throng of expatriate revelers outside Harry’s Bar in Paris.

The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, said something along similar lines. “Your election raises in France, in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, an immense hope,” he said in a message that called Obama’s victory “brilliant” and his campaign “exceptional.” Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany called his victory “historic” and invited Obama to return to Berlin, where he addressed a huge rally during his campaign.

Even in lands whose leaders are no friends of Washington, the election outcome cut through official propaganda to touch some people.

“It’s kind of nice to feel good about the United States again,” said Armando Díaz, 24, a bookkeeper in Caracas, Venezuela, where Enrique Cisneros, a storekeeper summed it up like this: “A few hours ago, the world felt like a different place.”

Indeed, for many who had watched this campaign from afar, there was a sense that the election was not just an American affair but something that touched people around the world, whatever their origin. “I want Obama to win with 99 percent, like Saddam Hussein,” said Hanin Abu Ayash, who works at a television station in Dubai and monitored early returns on his computer. “I swear if he doesn’t win, I’m going to take it personally.”

There was little doubt that for some, Obama’s skin color made his victory all the more exhilarating.

“The United States is choosing a black man as its president. Maybe we can share a bit in this happiness,” Cisneros said in Caracas.

The Afghan president, Karzai, said the election had shown the U.S. people overcoming distinctions “of race and color while electing their president” and thereby helping to bring “the same values to the rest of the world sooner or later.”

For many in Africa - and in Kenya especially - his election evoked a deepening of pride. As President Mwai Kibaki said in a message to Obama, “your victory is not only an inspiration to millions of people all over the world, but it has special resonance with us here in Kenya” - the birthplace of Obama’s father and paternal grandparents.

That sense of association may also encourage some to believe that Obama will give Africa special attention. “We express the hope that poverty and underdevelopment in Africa, which remains a challenge for humanity, will indeed continue to receive a greater attention of the focus of the new administration,” said Kgalema Motlanthe, the South African president.

Many outside Africa competed for his attention, too.

In a statement, the 27-nation European Union said it saw “the promise of a reinforced trans-Atlantic relationship” in Obama’s election. Even big business joined in.

“From a business perspective, I’m very happy that the economic issue was at the top of the agenda in the campaign,” said Lakshmi Mittal, the head of the world’s biggest steel-maker, “and we’re very positive that we’ll see more measures to address the economic crisis with his election.”

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner of France said that “American democracy has just lived through a marvelous moment, one of those major turning points that periodically demonstrates its vitality, its belief in the future and its trust in the values on which it was founded over two centuries.”

Members of the three major British political parties lavished praise on Obama. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said that Obama had run “an inspirational campaign, energizing politics with progressive values and his vision for the future.”

He mentioned several times that he planned to work closely with the new administration, said he had spoken to Obama “on many occasions,” called him a “true friend of Britain” and said: “I know Barack Obama and we share many values.”

But politicians also peer through the prism of self-interest.

In South Korea, some pondered the destiny of a free-trade agreement negotiated by the Bush administration and criticized by Obama. Lee Hae-min, South Korea’s top trade negotiator, warned that any change in the deal could undermine South Korea’s support for the deal and “open a Pandora’s box”.

In the Middle East, the focus of much tension that has drawn in successive American administrations, Saeb Erakat, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, urged Obama to transform the proposal for a two-state solution in the Palestine-Israel conflict “to a realistic track immediately.”

At the Vatican, a statement urged Obama to show “respect of human life” and expressed the hope that “God should illuminate the way” for him in his “great responsibility.”

Some saw a chance to patch up old feuds.

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who displeased Washington when he withdrew Spanish troops from Iraq in 2004, said Obama’s victory “demonstrated the vitality of this great country, and of democracy and the unstoppable force of the ballot to bring about change.” “I am confident this opens a horizon of promise for relations between the United States and Spain,” he said in Madrid.

But even in the moment of triumph, some in Europe questioned whether Obama would really make a break with his predecessor, President George W. Bush, the least popular U.S. leader among Europeans in recent history.

“When Obama takes office on January 20,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said in an editorial, “we will see whether the Europeans - and especially the Germans - really just had a problem with Bush’s presidency or with America itself.”

Others were less cynical. “The margin of victory was emphatic and, whatever else follows, today the world changed,” said an editorial in The Times of London, and The Guardian newspaper proclaimed: “They did it. They really did it. So often crudely caricatured by others, the American people yesterday stood in they eye of history and made an emphatic choice for change for themselves and the world.”

That was not a universal view in Moscow where one analyst, Mikhail Delyagin, compared Obama to Mikhail Gorbachev, who is often blamed in Russia for destroying the Soviet Union.

“Not having large-scale management experience, he has greater chances to disorganize America, to destabilize America, out of the very best intentions, as Gorbachev once did.”

But the supporters generally outnumbered the skeptics.. “We were all hoping that he would win,” said Carla Saggioro, a retired architect in Rome. “And the fact that he did with such a large margin is a sign of real change - at least let’s hope so.”

The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki Moon, called Obama’s election a “historic opportunity” for a stronger working relationship with the United States.

“He values highly the resolution of all the conflict issues through dialogue,” Ban said. “He has expressed publicly that he is willing to meet anybody, any country, so that will provide good opportunity not only for the United States, but also the United Nations as a whole to resolve all issues through dialogue.”

Ban said he had met MObama by chance last year on a plane flight. “He was very engaging and he knew a lot about the United Nations,” Ban said, “and I was very much encouraged.

Alexei Barrionuevo contributed reporting from Buenos Aires; Basil Katz, Susanne Fowler, David Jolly and Katrin Bennhold from Paris; Alissa Rubin from Forward Operating Base Falcon in Iraq; Michael Slackman from Dubai; Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul; Simon Romero from Caracas; Norimitsu Onishi from Tokyo; Seth Mydans and Thomas Fuller from Bangkok; Sam Dagher and The New York Times bureau from Baghdad; Rachel Donadio and Elisabetta Povoledo from Rome; Sarah Lyall from London; Barry Bearak and Celia W. Dugger from Johannesburg; Somini Sengupta from New Delhi; Peter Gelling from Jakarta; Sabrina Tavernise from Istanbul; Sophia Kishkovsky from Moscow; Carlos H. Conde from Manila; Abdul Waheed Wafa from Kabul; Meraiah Foley from Sydney; and Nicholas Kulish from Berlin.

From Zoriah Photojournalist

There are things that U.S. soldiers are allowed to talk about with the press and others they are not. One of the things they are not allowed to voice is their political opinion, especially if it goes against their commander in chief. In the privacy of latrine stalls on military bases in Iraq and Kuwait, however, it is quite a different story. I did not see any pro-Bush writings in any of the hundreds of latrines I photographed.

A political campaign can be like a rock slide. At some point, it’s just going to continue in the direction it’s heading–and not much can stop it. After the final debate between Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain, it may well be that the 2008 presidential contest has reached not the tipping point, but that rock slide point. This is not a prediction of a pro-Obama avalanche on November 4–though that’s a possibility. It’s merely an observation that the campaign may be done in the sense that there are no major inputs to come (barring a bolt-from-the-blue event) that will affect the final tally. Polls will show that there are still some undecided voters out there. (Who are these people?) But whatever’s going to determine this election–economic concerns, a desire for change, racism, you name it–is probably already in place, and the candidates may not be able to alter this, at least not in a proactive manner. Certainly, at any time, either can turn the race upside down by saying or doing something particularly dopey.

Neither got dopey on Wednesday night. McCain even had his best (or his least unsuccessful) debate performance, but it was no–damn, I hate this cliché–game changer. McCain was more aggressive than in the previous face-offs, and he finally dared to challenge Barack Obama directly on the–drum roll, please–Bill Ayers Question. But there was this: viewers watching McCain’s reaction shots during the evening could have easily wondered if the Republican presidential nominee would make it to the finish without his head exploding, for he seemed to be in the midst of an exercise in anger control.

Prior to the debate, there was much chatter about whether McCain would play the Ayers card. Judging from video of his recent rallies, it appeared that his base was demanding blood on this front. But polls indicated that these sorts of attacks have been hurting McCain with in-the-middle voters. So he faced a tough decision: ignore Ayers and upset the diehards or accuse Obama of being a pal of a domestic terrorist and alienate the indies.

McCain and his strategists came up with a hybrid approach: take a shot on the Ayers front and combine it with a traditional political assault. “I don’t care about an old washed-up terrorist,” McCain huffed, but then he went on to say, “we need to know the full extent of that relationship.” Huh? If you don’t care about Ayers, why do you care about the relationship? And why repeat the false claim that Obama launched his first political campaign within Ayer’s living room?

This was essentially McCain’s love letter to the GOP base. (”Now get off my case, okay?”) More important, he attached it to his true attack of the night: Obama will raise your taxes. After quickly running through his Ayers index cards, McCain noted, “My campaign is about getting this economy back on track…I’m not going to raise taxes the way Senator Obama wants to raise taxes.” In what was probably the last big moment of the campaign before Election Day, McCain offered this meta-argument: Obama is a liberal tax-and-spend Democrat, and I’m a conservative. (He left off the Republican part.)

Repeatedly, McCain accused Obama of wanting to throw money at problems and of yearning to raise taxes. When Obama maintained he would give tax breaks to the bottom 95 percent–and more tax relief than McCain would to this large slice of the American public–McCain replied: hey, this guy wants to raise taxes. And, by the way, he wants to spend your money.

McCain did tout his own plan to spend $300 billion to buy up troubled home mortgages, and he maintained his health care tax credits were the right medicine. (Obama blasted the former as a “giveaway” to banks and noted that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had slammed the latter.) But his main message was, Obama is just another Democrat and, my friends, we all know what that means. Obama, he charged, wants to spread the wealth. J’accuse: he wants class warfare.

After nearly eight years of a conservative Republican White House now held in disdain by many voters–and at a time when the federal government is partially nationalizing banks–how much juice is there in this old Democrats-are-bad argument? Sure, McCain was punchier in this debate than in the previous two. But being aggressive on a tired message won’t do a candidate much good. “I am not President Bush,” McCain proclaimed with some anger in his voice. But this declaration of purported independence may have come a bit late in the process.

And Obama did fight back. He repeatedly corrected McCain when McCain mischaracterized his tax plans. He reminded viewers that McCain favors handing $200 billion in tax cuts to corporations, including ExxonMobile. Obama talked about raising taxes on the wealthy in order to pay for “core investments”–tax breaks for middle-class Americans, health care, education, and energy independence. McCain fired back: there he goes again, thinking that the government can do better with Joe the Plumber’s money than Joe can. (Joe the Plumber is a real guy, and McCain cited him as someone who would not fare well under Obama’s tax proposal.) But at a time of crisis, such Reaganistic rhetoric–as much as it jazzes up base voters–could come across to some as either retro or, worse, irrelevant.

McCain talked much about how he would cut spending in Washington; Obama discussed how he would assist middle-class Americans. Perhaps the key question then is, do voters want a president who will kick butt on Capitol Hill regarding certain types of spending, or one who will help them during tough times?

And do they want a grouch? McCain frequently appeared irritated. He interrupted Obama more than he should have. And he stumbled over his words too often. (In deriding gold-plated health care plans, he equated transplants with cosmetic surgery.) At one point, McCain went on too long, demanding that Obama repudiate Rep. John Lewis’ observation that the hatred on display at McCain-Palin rallies was reminiscent of the worst days of the civil rights movement. On this matter, McCain came across as petulant. (Obama noted his campaign had put out a statement calling Lewis’ comparison inappropriate.) More than once, McCain sarcastically complimented Obama’s “eloquence.”

Obama was, again, cool and calm. He praised McCain for showing “commendable independence” on some issues, such as the use of torture. Obama never took the bait. He ably batted back McCain’s attacks on his tax record and proposal. He spoke in measured tones about abortion and voiced respect for those who differ with him on this topic. If his goal was to look steady and smooth–like someone capable of dealing with, say, a mega-crisis–Obama succeeded.

In his closing statement, McCain said the fundamental issue of the campaign was whether “you can trust us or not to be careful stewards of your tax dollars.” He noted his decades of service to the country–as in, Country First–and asked voters to “give me an opportunity to serve again.” Obama took a different approach: he again outlined what he wants to do for the middle class: tax cuts, health care reform, greater access to college, an energy independence program. As had happened in the last debate, McCain finished by referencing the McCain-the-Hero Story; Obama was offering himself as a leader who will do right by and for you. It was past versus future. Old guy versus young guy. You do the math.

Though television pundits initially praised McCain’s feisty performance, the quickie polls, once more, indicated viewers scored the debate a win for Obama. (CNN: 58-to-31; CBS: 53-to-32.) That was no surprise. The issue is not whether McCain’s attacks this time around were slightly more focused or assertive; it’s what he’s selling. And in the midst of an economic maelstrom, how many voters want a fellow at the helm who says government is the problem. There’s also a significant measure of cognitive dissonance within McCain’s pitch: one moment, he’s assailing Obama’s addiction to government solutions; the next he’s calling for the government to buy up all those bad mortgages.

Which brings us back to the rock slide. The forces that will dictate the final outcome may well be set by now. And there was not much McCain could have done in this last debate to change the movement of the tectonic plates of this election. There could be last-minute bombshells. And it’s likely that independent outfits on the right are preparing a final blitzkrieg of negative ads against Obama (that secret Muslim/Black Panther socialist who hangs out with domestic terrorists who want to kill you and your family). But the race might be over but for the remaining shouting and the actual voting–though early voting has begun in many states, with already 540,000 people having voted in the state of Georgia.

It sure is not an encouraging sign for a candidate when he does his best in a debate and the insta-polls indicate that he was crushed. Following this debate, Obama will continue to stride along–being reassuring, if even boring. And for McCain, there does not appear to be any obvious path. After all, he’s not behind the wheel. For the next three weeks, he’s stuck in the passenger seat. And see that sign? Caution: falling rocks.

Meet Andy Martin, O.G. (Original Guy to Say Obama is a Muslim)

The McCain campaign’s “Obama is a Muslim” platform sure is catchy. Bet you think that Steve Schmidt is one shrewd guy to make that the campaign’s overarching message.

Well you’re wrong. Steve Schmidt is just a puppet. The real architect of McCain’s campaign is some guy named Andy Martin, a self-described “colorful person” who back in 2004 sent around an “Obama is a Muslim” press release. Recent weeks show that the message in that release has been embraced by John McCain as the core ethos of his candidacy.

Let’s take a look at Andy Martin and learn exactly who it is that McCain is allowing to guide his ship:

CREDENTIALS: Graduated law school, but blocked from the Illinois bar after a psych evaluation found “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.” Well, he did say he was colorful.

EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE: Ran for president twice, in 1988 and 2000. No need to check Wikipedia. Those runs were unsuccessful.

CONGRESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: attempted to run for Congress in Connecticut. Paperwork for one of his campaign committees included as its purpose: “To exterminate Jew power.” Clearly, this committee did not achieve its goals. (I mean, look around!)

CONNECTIONS: according to the New York Times, “He has left a trail of animosity — some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments — among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years.” Take out the anti-Jewish stuff, and this sentence could be about John McCain’s relationship with his own party.

JAIL-TIME: Funny you should ask. Yes! Andy was jailed in Florida in a case involving a physical altercation.

MEDIA COVERAGE: Has filed so many frivolous lawsuits that he was once the subject of an hour-long episode of the news-program “48 Hours.” He’s famous!

OPINIONS ABOUT THE JEWISH PEOPLE: He has some. In a motion filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case, Andy called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.” In another motion filed that year he wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.” It is not clear whether his bankruptcy filing was successful.

It certainly sounds like Andy Martin would not be the man to give voice to the dominant strategy of John McCain’s campaign. He’s ruffled quite a few feathers in his time, and made a lot of enemies. But we have a word for that kind of rabble-rouser. It’s “Maverick.” Well, “barely employed, chemically imbalanced anti-semite” works also. But there’s some Maverick in there too, you betcha there is.

Election ‘08: Did You Vote Against Cindy McCain’s Son?

The McCain campaign has released its ultimate weapon- an heiress with a pill habit. Cindy McCain, who mentions her son’s service more than a Florida sheriff mentions Obama’s middle name, said this about her husband’s opponent:

“The day that Sen. Obama cast a vote to not to fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body let me tell you.”

Cindy then asked Senator Obama to wear her shoes, which probably cost more than the Obama family car.

Did anyone tell her that John McCain also voted against funding Cindy McCain’s son? And that both bills contained extra provisions that both Senators objected to? Oh facts, they are a drag!

McCain Campaign Do-Over: Did we say $500 FOR Every Rape Victim? We Meant FROM

Looks like there was a little typo in McCain’s new mortgage plan when he put it online Tuesday night. At the end of the first paragraph, the document included the line: “Lenders in these cases must recognize the loss that they’ve already suffered.” Which means the lenders would have to suffer and the government would purchase the mortgages at discounted prices.

Yeah, that was a misprint. Turns out, McCain wants to buy the mortgages at face value, protecting lenders from losing a dime and forcing taxpayers to foot the bill. A McCain campaign official explained:

“That language was mistakenly included in the initial draft and it’s been corrected…a simple mistake.”

Of course. Considering that sentence completely redefines the entire plan and its effect on the economic crisis, we can understand how that’s where you might get a little sloppy. It wouldn’t have had to do with the fact that every conservative pundit in the nation pissed their blogs the minute you made your little announcement would it?

AIG Retreat

Barack Obama wants to fire them. The House Oversight committee is super-pissed at them. All because AIG executives didn’t let the ink dry on their $85 billion bailout before spending almost half a million dollars at the posh St. Regis resort and spa in California.

Simmer down everybody. When you finally finish all the paperwork on an $85 billion loan, you could use a couple massages. And besides, according to the NY Insurance Department’s superintendant, they had to go!

“I do agree there is some profligate spending there, but the concept of bringing all the major employees together … to ensure that the $85 billion could be as greatly as possible paid back would have been not a crazy corporate decision,” Dinallo told the House committee.

See, all the conference rooms were booked! It was either go to the St Regis resort, or Ibiza.

You can officially get your laugh on at 236.com

Gen. Petraeus Backs Obama: ‘You Have to Talk to Enemies.’

McCain has constantly mocked Obama by saying Barack’s attitude of negotiating with our enemies is a clear indication of his lack of experience in foreign policy matters. McCain also cites Gen. Petraeus as often as he can as he tries to use his support of “the surge” to demonstrate his judgement. Well, Gen. Petraeus just destroyed his argument with his appearance at the Heritage Foundation.

The Washington Independent:

Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America’s adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.

All that was the subject of one of the most contentious tussles between McCain and Obama in the first presidential debate, with Obama contending that his intent to negotiate with foreign adversaries without “precondition” did not mean that he would neglect diplomatic “preparation.”

McCain, apparently perceiving an opportunity for attack, Tuesday again used Obama’s comments to attack his judgment. “Sen. Obama, without precondition, wants to sit down and negotiate with them, without preconditions,” McCain said, referring to Iran.

Yet Petraeus emphasized throughout his lecture that reaching out to insurgent groups — some “with our blood on their hands,” he said — was necessary to the ultimate goal of turning them against irreconcilable enemies like Al Qaeda in Iraq.

I wonder what McCain will say at the 3rd presidential Debate when Obama brings all this up. Will McCain say that Petraeus was just a little confused? I guess we should just ask Sean Hannity since he basically runs the messaging of McCain’s campaign. If you get the chance, call in to his radio show, ask him, record it and send me the audio.
Gen. Petraeus also wants to negotiate with the Taliban.

Palin Greeted with “Resounding Boos” at Philly Hockey Game; FOX Edits it Out

Hockey Mom Sarah Palin was welcomed in the city of brotherly love Saturday night with a resounding chorus of boos when she took center ice for the ceremonial puck drop. Gotta love the clearly visible Obama/Biden signs in the background.

Lynn Zinser of the Times reports that Palin was greeted with “resounding (almost defeaning) boos.” FOX News, on the other hand, reports that the reaction “mixed.” Who’s right? Jed put together this clip comparing the real footage with the footage FOX uses to make its case. See for yourself.

Looks like Sarah brought her daughters along as a human shields:

The GOP Vice-Presidential nominee said at an earlier fundraiser that she would stop some of the booing from the rowdy Philadelphia fans by putting her seven year old daughter, Piper in a Flyers jersey. She said, “How dare they boo Piper!”

Stay classy, Wasilla.

By the way, Rangers won 4-3 and improved their record to 4-0, making this their best start in 25 years. Only 78 wins away from a perfect season.

Comparing Campaign Attacks: The Chris Matthews Show Panel Just Doesn’t Get It

Glenn Greenwald has a must-read piece this week exploring how the concept of “balance” corrupts any sense of honest media analysis. Case in point: The Washington Post’s Dan Balz trying to equate Barack Obama’s attacks (“erratic”,”uncertain”,“lurching”) to John McCain’s attacks (”he’s an untrustworthy, un-American terrorist sympathizer“).

Balz’s article is about the increasing use of “character attacks” in the presidential race, and rather than state the truth — that the McCain/Palin ticket is now relying almost exclusively on some of the ugliest and most outright dangerous character smears seen in a modern presidential election — Balz instead pretends that this is a phenomenon of which both sides are guilty in equal measure.

This clip from the Chris Matthews Show is yet another fascinating example. Tweety, Howard Fineman, Gloria Borger, David Ignatius, and Cynthia Tucker simply can’t bring themselves to state the obvious.

Download | Play Download | Play (h/t Heather)

In a rational world, a legitimate attack on your opponent’s unsteady and erratic leadership during times of crisis is light years away from the vicious, dangerous types of character assaults we’re hearing from the McCain camp. I mean think about it: They’re not even trying to sell policy anymore. Instead, they’re linking the terms “Barack Hussein Obama” and “terrorist” to the point where John McCain is forced to remind his traveling lynch mob that Obama is not, in fact, a “scary Arab.” And when he does, he gets viciously booed.

We shouldn’t underestimate the significance of John Lewis’ recent remarks. There’s a reason McCain told Rick Warren that he’s one of the wisest people he knows.

WARREN: The first question, who are the three wisest people that you know that you would rely on heavily in an administration?

MCCAIN: I think John Lewis. John Lewis was at the Edmund Pettis Bridge, had his skull fractured, continued to serve, continues to have the most optimistic outlook about America. He can teach us all a lot about the meaning of courage and commitment to causes greater than our self- interest.

It’s become pretty damn clear that McCain isn’t remotely interested in “courage” and “causes greater than his self-interest.” If he were, he would be talking about the economy and 401k’s, not William Ayers and domestic terrorists, whipping his crazed supporters into a blind fury in the process. The potential consequences of his rhetoric are downright scary; he truly is “playing with fire”. And it’s the height of irresponsibility for smart people whose job it is to decode the subtext to stay silent and pretend it’s “balanced” to treat them equally.

Don’t get me wrong: Is Barack Obama partly referring to McCain’s age in his stump speeches? Sure. But when your opponent is all over the map on the most crucial issue of the campaign — “the fundamentals are strong” to “OMG! this is the biggest crisis ever” in 3.2 seconds — it would be political malpractice not to contrast that unsteady temperament with your own cool, calm, and collected demeanor. But we’re talking apples and bowling balls here.

Glenn has a good follow-up piece worth reading.

Far Right “Veterans Group” Gives All Democrats F’s On Veteran’s Issues

‘Barack Osama’ On Absentee Ballots

Build Our Way Out of Depression, Dems Say

Democratic lawmakers are planning a massive infrastructure package as an economic stimulus after the November elections.

“Not only is Wall Street frozen, but Main Street is in real trouble. A stimulus aimed at Main Street makes sense,” New York Sen. Charles Schumer told CNN.

He said the plan should “get into the guts of the economy” by boosting spending on infrastructure such as roads, sewer and water projects.

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who served under President Bill Clinton, told CNN that an infrastructure plan that could quickly pump money into the economy was the most important action that U.S. authorities could take to help deal with the current economic crisis.

“I would put in place an infrastructure piece… bridges, water systems roads, highways, but not new projects that are going to take a long time to set up,” Rubin said. “There are a lot of existing projects where states and cities are having a hard time finding a lot of financing where you could funnel that money right into existing activities where you would be able to act very very quickly.”

Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told ABC he’ll be spearheading the House version of the package.

Meanwhile, Republicans are apparently set on “staying the course” on tax cuts, which have failed to prevent the economy getting into such dire straits in the first place.

Rep. Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who serves as House minority leader, said he would support a stimulus plan if it did not include massive public works spending and budget bailouts for states that overspent on health care and other social programs.

Not that Republican recalcitrance may have a lot of say in the matter.

Barring a dramatic change in the political landscape over the next three weeks, Democrats appear headed toward a decisive victory on Election Day that would give them broad power over the federal government.

The victory would send Barack Obama to the White House and give him larger Democratic majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate — and perhaps a filibuster-proof margin there.