I'm on vacation on Martha's Vineyard this week (in fact, I'm missing a chance to see Howard Dean in Oak Bluffs tonight–fifty bucks is a little steep), so I'm reading the Globe every day, which I never do at home.

Here's a story that doesn't seem to have made the national news yet, but it's troubling nonetheless. The Anti-Defamation League is a national sponsor of a popular anti-bigotry program called No Place for Hate that is designed to challenge anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, and all forms of bigotry in their communities and schools.

Unfortunately, “all forms of bigotry” apparently don't include the Turkish genocide of Armenians in the last century.

From 1915 to 1923, Ottoman Turks massacred as many as 1.5 million Armenians in what is now modern-day Turkey. Armenians, historians, and some European nations recognized the killings as genocide. The Turkish government has refused to accept the genocide label, and the ADL's national director, Abraham H. Foxman, has also infuriated Armenian-Americans for refusing to call it a genocide.

When asked in a Globe interview last month if he believed what happened to the Armenians was genocide, Foxman replied, “I don't know.” Critics have seized on the remark as suggesting the issue is open to debate, and some have called it genocide denial.

Yup, it's true, and this position puts the ADL at risk of losing some of its credibility and hurting its programs. One town in Massachusetts has already pulled out, and Armenian leaders around Massachusetts and the United States are already moving in the same direction.

Maybe it's time for the ADL to take another look at the issue, and resume its proud position as a leading opponent of bigotry.

It's not just a partisan question, but we're certainly hearing lots of stories about how Rove was the greatest political genius we've ever seen, never lost, and blah, blah, blah.

A story in today's Globe raises yet another question about that, although Rove's name isn't even mentioned.

I've made this observation before over at Rational Resistance, and now it's been confirmed and even Arlen Specter agrees with me. It has to do with the unceremonious way they dumped Rumsfeld after the election last year. You remember, a few days before the election Bush was asked if Rummy was staying on and Bush replied that he absolutely was, that he was going to be the Secretary of Defense for the forseeable future? And then, the day after the election, Rummy was out all of a sudden. Bush even admitted lying about it, although not in so many words.

Today's Globe has a story based on a long series of FOIA requests, which were finally successful after months of stonewalling by the administration, and now it turns out that Rummy's letter of resignation was signed the day before the election. The White House confirmed yesterday that Rumsfeld's letter of resignation was dated Nov. 6, 2006, the day before voters — many of them furious about the war in Iraq — evicted Republicans from the leadership of the House and Senate.

Now we know that no decisions were made in the Bush White House without Rove, but doesn't it strike you that it might have been smarter to toss Rove under the bus before the election? That's what Arlen Specter thinks: “If Rumsfeld had been out, you bet it would have made a difference,” Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said at the time. “I'd still be chairman of the Judiciary Committee.”

So this obviously proves that Rove isn't as smart as the conventional wisdom (and he) would have you believe.

It also proves that, after all these years, we finally have something to thank Rove for.

Who would have thought it?

In a story in the LA Times yesterday “Top general may propose pullbacks” Julian E. Barnes and Peter Spiegel report that Petraeus may announce pullbacks from some areas in Iraq, including al Anbar province and a turnover of those ares to Iraqi forces.

I’m somewhat mystified by this process as it appears that, at the White House, they seem to know already, in other words, today, what they are going to report in September, in other words, a month from today. In fact it seems that they began writing their “field report” weeks ago… in the White House.

I’m not sure why exactly, but this somehow reminds me of reports I hear from teachers with experience in the “no child left behind” follies, who have described to me the specter of spending weeks and weeks of classroom time devoted to “teaching to the test” in order to maintain mandated academic ratings and the flow of federal funds. Taking the test is mostly a charade, passing the test, a foregone conclusion, an exercise in making things look good on paper.

In other words, as Junior might say every few seconds, in the case of Iraq they are writing a “report” which will contain recommendations that will allow us to draw conclusions, that were decided on in the White House more than a month ago.

They will do, in this instance, what they have done so unsuccessfully for the last 7 years, they will start from a set of erroneous facts, ask for recommendations or intelligence from the field, cherry pick the recommendations and intelligence to find those nuggets that fit their assumptions, ignore the rest, have the advertising guys in the White House cook up a great big pot of bullshit stew, order the military and diplomats to sign off on it, and have Petraeus and Crocker carry the wholly fraudulent, putrid mess up to capitol hill and serve it to congress, where as we well know “they’ll eat anything.”

The LA Times says:

Despite Bush?s repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report?s data.

I’m clear out here in Dayton, Ohio and I can tell you this, long before the General and the Ambassador board the plane in Baghdad next month, long before the admen in the West Wing have finished tweaking and spinning the “report from the field” I could write it myself.

In fact, for less than the price of two first class, round trip tickets from Baghdad to Washington, I’ll personally write all the General’s “field reports and recommendations” to Congress for the next calendar year, and I’ll throw this one in as well.

The situation in Iraq is steadily improving, but we still face challenges and a lot of hard work, in other words the enemy is still out there trying to hurt us, in other words the evil ones still want to kill Americans. Therefore we will continue the current troop levels through the end of the year, in other words sometime in February and the General will report back at that time.

In other words then.

Until then we will continue the hard work of writing the General’s next report.

I don’t know how much it’s going to cost the taxpayers to ship Petraeus and Crocker, their respective staffs, roadies, valets, hairdressers whatever, from Baghdad to the Hill and back to the Green Zone, but I can deliver the kind of reports that the President needs quickly, efficiently and at greatly reduced cost to the taxpayer from my world headquarters right here in Dayton, Ohio.

All they have to do is send me the conclusions… data, by telegraph is okay.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Related Stories and Sources:

Top general may propose pullbacks

Petraeus: Troop Reduction Plan Seen

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the cast of the remake of “Outland”

In the latest shift in developments regarding Iran, Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced today that he is commencing filming on a remake of the classic 1981 science-fiction film “Outland”, starring Sean Connery. In the original film, often dubbed “High Noon in space”, Connery plays a law enforcement guy trying to get to the bottom of who's passing out some psychosis-inducing drug to the space workers. Ahmadinejad himself, realizing the increasing public scrutiny he is under in recent days, has opted to play the role of Sheppard, the drug dealer played by Peter Boyle in the original:

At the press conference announcing the film, Ahmadinejad stated, “I don't want the recent negative publicity about me in the U.S. to affect the success of this film, so I've given the lead role of O'Neil (originally portrayed by Connery) to my Assistant Deputy Minister of Culture, Razbek Uzmikistani (pictured right, in top picture). He has quite a background in Iranian dinner theater, and has seen Connery's “From Russia With Love” eighteen times, so he is undoubtedly one of Iran's master thespians.”  He then continued, “I have always been a fan of the original, I'm quite the sci-fi nut, actually. Filmaking has always been my first love, I just happened upon this oppressive leader thing on a lark, to be quite honest. Film is my true calling, and remaking Outland is a fulfilment of a lifelong dream for me.” 

Not one to miss a moment to beat the drums of war, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney commented on the news: “This so-called “Outland remake” is just the latest in the long line of deceptions from Mr. Ahmadinejad, as he continues to fund our enemies in the War on Terror and flaunt world opinion by developing nuclear arms. Independent of the fact that only a Westerner should consider remaking a classic such as “Outland”,  our intelligence is also reporting that the futuristic movie sets could quite possibly be concealing a complex network of nuclear missile silos. We need to bomb the shit out of them as soon as possible.” 

Ahmadinejad is hoping to release the movie for the upcoming Ramadan movie season, so look for it then. I hope it's at least as good as the original.

(an excellent follow-up to my brief piece on earmarks… – promoted by JDRyan)

JD put up a interesting piece explaining the fact that Vermont receives a good chunk of change from the feds (relative to most of our sister states) from the regressively acquired income tax they take from us each April 15th.

I guess I'm comforted by the fact that we “beat” out a few states where the money might go to, for instance, subsidize educational mind bending child abuse. Still I see only one discussion about the federal balance sheet and it centers on how every one of us individual U.S. taxpayers fits into conservative Republican tax and fiscal policy?

George Bush and the conservative Republicans looting the treasury have deliberately put into place the largest tax bill increase in the history of the world and this is the only fiscal/tax issue that registers with me.

Let's go to the board . . .

 Every taxpayer in the United States now has a Bush tax bill/liability of $95,000.00.  Your $95,000.00 “Bush” tax surcharge is in addition to your previously tallied and billed regressive income tax obligations.  This additional $95,000.00 tax bill is only for the last six years.  I'm not an economist, and my math is rudimentary.  However, these numbers are pretty close to the mark, the discrepancies are rounding errors of relative insignificance.  While dealing with approximations, the picture these numbers paint is as real as it gets.   

Rough numbers: 

Considering all the costs, (i.e., hard costs, military waste, ruin & depreciation, opportunity costs and the trillion(s) related to current (and soon to be more) casualties in Iraq,) we are looking at well over $1 trillion in additional Pentagon appropriations solely for the U.S. war on Iraq.

Do not (please don't) forget the Iraqis, whose suffering is far greater than anything the U.S. can imagine. Future Iraqi generations will live painfully with the cost of the U.S. war.  The Iraqi's economic losses (think of, for example, economic production, destroyed infrastructure, employment/wages, future medical costs, rebuilding costs, environmental damage, leftover bombs/mines/munitions, maimed children and even farm animals), will be far more than what the U.S. cost is.  

Pretend for a moment that the U.S. is a civil and moral society (I said PRETEND). Pretend this nation could muster the courage and moral resolve to restore some semblance of the future we stole from the Iraqi people, and pretend we were willing to help them through their suffering and rebuilding. How much would that cost – excluding any thoughts of developing a military capacity for them?  Three $Trillion? Four $Trillion? Easy. 'Just' two trillion $$ in a country of approximately 20 million (and shrinking) equalls approx. $100,000 per person. When talking about rebuilding entire towns, lifetimes of prosthetic limbs and medical rehab/chronic suffering, environmental damage etc. that is not a great deal of money.   

Iraq.  Let’s hold the line at $2 Trillion — cheap. Unreasonable at the rate we're going, but let's pretend it's only $2 Trillion.

The U.S: Our future military medical costs far exceed $1 trillion just for the troop's various cuts & bruise.  Then, minimally, there is another $1 trillion just for lost equipment costs, future equipment repair/replacement needs etc. One can at least assume Congress will actually appropriates replacement $$s to the military industrial complex to buy new hardware to replace all the toys we destroyed in the the U.S. War on Iraq (yes, this is one bill the Congress/President will pay).  

Consider the lost economic productivity of everyone associated with the war effort, the debt the U.S. is incurring, the lost future wages and economic activity associated with the misuse of military assets both human and tangible and you are talking about another $2 trillion. I won’t even speculate how much wealth might of have been generated by directing our dollars and assets toward constructive activities (education, infrastructure, developing an alternative fuel economy etc. & what about genuine tax cuts because we could actually afford them w/o war?).  Those economic gains would be worth an incalculable amount of money in the future, but I am not an economist and quantifying them is too depressing.  Even before the escalation of our War on the Iraqis and their civil war against each other, conservative projections of future U.S. Troops' health care cost had reached almost $700 billion, which is already starting to look like a “quaint” figure.  

Similarly, money can, and never will, replace the value of our national security that we squandered through intentional mlitary misadventure. 

I’m not an economist or even a mathematician but it seems, conservatively and realistically, that our dollar losses and commitments may total $1 Billion (pre-existing military medical costs) + $2 trillion (minimal compensation to Iraq) + $2 trillion (military/pentagon costs so far exclusive of veteran costs) + $1.5 trillion economic activity & economic generation/productivity and tax generation by productive military employment losses + (I will ignore the trillions of lost opportunity and cost of “security replacement that we can’t afford regardless).  That adds up to $6.5 trillion so far assuming we stop before September 2007.

Fiscal policy malpractice:  Mister Bush just delivered a growing $6.5 trillion liability by invading a country that did not threaten the U.S. (although the U.S. war on Iraq will certainly threaten the U.S. for the rest of our lifetimes).

Mister Bush has also thrown a few extra (borrowed) trillion $$ onto the national debt in addition to the U.S. War on Iraq liabilities for which no appropriation has been planned or outlined.  His spending in just six years so far has increased the national wealth of China debt from roughly $6 to roughly $12 trillion.    (War $6.5 trillion + Wealth transfer & credit card debt $6 trillion.  Total so far $12.5 trillion — give or take).

There are approximately 131,000,000 individual U.S. taxpayers who have been handed a bill for $12.5 trillion dollars. That works out to the nice round number of $95,420.00.

On top of ALL the other taxes working people in the U.S. must pay, and for which they are obligated to pay in the future, Mister Bush has hit us wiht a bill, more correctly known as a “tax increase,” since that is how the bill must be paid. It must be paid to the tune of another $95,000.00 per individual taxpayer in the U.S. 

My understanding of history is that this represents the single largest tax burden and tax increase in the history of the world.  I hope I am wrong because my wallet just spontaneously combusted and I do hope that I missed a decimal point somewhere.

Regardless of where I may have made my rounding errors, it is safe to say,  when it comes to taxes, Mister Bush is responsible for the largest tax burden on individual taxpayers in U.S. history.

Perhaps the media (and preferably our Democratic candidates and friends in Congress) will be kind enough to acknowledge the fiscal and tax burden side of the federal spending picture.  For instance, when asking us to salivate over the whopping $250 bucks we receive from D.C. every year, perhaps an explanation about why we are each racking up about $1,400 in tax increases each month Bush serves as President.

Better yet, at the same time Congress starts digging in to consider when to cut U.S. war on Iraq funding, maybe it will require Mister Bush to raise the money he is charging and spending at the same time. Just sayin.’ After all, Congress is not asking the U.S. war supporters to actually fight the damn thing, might Mister Bush at least ask someone to pay part of the neocon war bill against which our social security trust fund has been hypothecated to the Chinese? 

A “my-$250 circle-is-bigger-than-your-$210 circle” is an attractive distraction placating millions of voters in the partial rebate states. In fact, it is typically enough to distract most people from the federal fiscal-fist-fuck in ass we all take with each additional annual half trillion $$ in defense appropriations, shortly followed by another GOP race to spike the debt ceiling another $trillion pursuant to Republican credit card economics. So, ever wonder how much of that pork is defense related?

Every individual taxpayer in the U.S.A. needs to understand s/he just received a $95,000.00 Working Person Surcharge along with their $150-$250 in-kind pro rata appropriation. Perhaps then voters will understand why countries spending their money on health care and infrastructure, as opposed to killing people and burning their literal and figurative bridges abroad, have substantially greater quality of life, more efficient public services, affordable health care, better education and more overall security. All this but without the burden of a supplemental tax bill for $95,000.00 sitting on the kitchen table, which is unique only to the U.S.

Tomorrow (that is, Thursday, August 16), at noon, a small but dedicated group of peace activists in Franklin County will hold a press conference to bring attention to the local cost of U.S. participation in the unwinnable religious civil war in Iraq. The group is the Franklin County Peace Alliance, and as of this moment, it is the only MoveOn.org-registered group in Northern Vermont. The punchline of the MoveOn-disseminated report: Vermonters have had their tax pockets picked by Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Blackwater, et al to the tune of $663 million since the U.S. military began its occupation for the control of oil.

According to The National Priorities Project , which generated the numbers:

The numbers include military and non-military spending, such as reconstruction. Spending only includes incremental costs, additional funds that are expended due to the war. For example, soldiers’ regular pay is not included, but combat pay is included. Potential future costs, such as future medical care for soldiers and veterans wounded in the war, are not included. It is also not clear whether the current funding will cover all military wear and tear. It also does not account for the Iraq War being deficit-financed and that taxpayers will need to make additional interest payments on the national debt due to those deficits.

The local cost for Franklin County, again according to the National Priorities Project’s local costs page, is over $50 million. Burlington’s cost comes in at over $34 mil; Chittenden County at $186 mil. Montpelier kicks in an even $8 million. The details on how the figures were arrived at:

The state-level costs in the table are computed based on how much each state contributes in tax revenues, according to IRS data. The local-level costs are based on the state costs, and on relative population and income levels in each location. These numbers were updated for the latest IRS data in Sept 2006. The population and household amounts are based on Census Bureau estimates: population as of February 2007; households for 2005. The taxpayer amount is based on IRS projected taxfilers for the 2005 tax year.

Beyond the numbers, the idea is to set up for a national peace vigil on August 28, soon before Congress returns from summer vacation to focus on the “War Report” due from General David Petraeus. The object is to get Reps and Senators to see that fear, fraud, and funding an unwinnable civil war are no longer (if they ever were) national priorities. What this country needs is peace, NOW! What this country needs is for funding to be directed to domestic needs and not into the pockets of war profiteers. What this country needs is to fund an economy that doesn’t force adolescents into uniform because there are so few other options. What this country, this county needs is for husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters in uniform to come home, safe, whole, and sane.

In Franklin County there will be a vigil for peace, the safe return of soldiers, and the end of American participation in the Iraq civil war, in Taylor Park on August 28, organized by the Franklin County Peace Alliance. Stay tuned for more details.

NanuqFC
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. — George Orwell