How Do I Hate Him? Let Us Count The Ways...

My Way News - Analysis: Bush Foreign Policy Struggling:

WASHINGTON (AP) - These are dreary days for U.S. diplomacy.

A string of disappointments in recent weeks has left Washington's role as a global power broker diminished. The unalloyed U.S. support for Israel during two weeks of fighting with Hezbollah insurgents in Lebanon and American refusal to agree to a quick cease-fire are leaving the Bush administration ever more isolated internationally.

U.S. relations with its allies had shown signs of improvement in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But the signs of strain are growing:

_Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice failed to agree in Rome with European and Arab allies on terms for a cease-fire to end two weeks of Israel-Hezoballah violence.

_President Bush and visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had to concede a six-week-old plan for quelling violence in Baghdad had failed. Bush ordered more U.S. troops to Iraq's battered capital - a setback to hopes for a big drawdown of U.S. troops this year.

_Efforts to get North Korea and Iran to restrict their nuclear ambitions remained stalled.

_World trade talks collapsed.

Must be time to go on vacation. Bushes need whacking down at the ranch.

Christy At FDL Feels The Rage, Too

Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog » Just Read These…:
"The war on terror ought to now officially be renamed the 'terrorist creation program.' Because that is exactly what these half-assed, piss poor planning jobs from George Bush and his neocon cabal have been foisting on all of us."

And Another Thing...

My Way News:

GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations human rights body told Washington on Friday to close any 'secret detention' centers for terrorism suspects, saying they were banned by international law.

Declaring it had 'credible and uncontested' reports of such jails, the U.N. Human Rights Committee said the United States appeared to have been detaining people 'secretly and in secret places for months and years.'

International law? What's that?

Turning Blind Eye Costing More

Utilities Pay Scientist Ally on Warming - New York Times:

WASHINGTON, July 27 — Coal-burning utilities are contributing money to one of the few remaining climate scientists openly critical of the broad consensus that fossil fuel emissions are intensifying global warming.

The critic, Patrick J. Michaels, is a professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and Virginia’s state climatologist.

Dr. Michaels told Western business leaders last year that he was running out of money for his analyses of other scientists’ global warming research. So a Colorado utility organized a collection campaign for him last week and has raised at least $150,000 in donations and pledges.

How will Fox News keep the debate fair and balanced when the last scientist to be bought can't be found? Maybe they can use animation to fill in the dissenting seat.

What Planet Are You From?

What About Us? - New York Times:
"At a time when global warming has become an overriding issue, NASA has been delaying or canceling programs that could shed light on how the climate changes. The shortsighted cutbacks appear to result from sharply limiting NASA’s budget while giving it hugely expensive tasks like repairing the stricken shuttle fleet, finishing construction of the space station, and preparing to explore the Moon and Mars. Something had to give, and NASA’s choices included research into how the planet’s climate is responding to greenhouse gas emissions."

Chicago’s Message - New York Times

Chicago’s Message - New York Times:
"The anti-Wal-Mart movement collided with the growing national debate about minimum wages in Chicago this week. The city council passed an ordinance requiring big retailers to pay higher wages and benefits than other businesses must. Legal challenges are bound to follow, but the council’s action should be taken as another sign that while Washington ignores the problem of living wages for workers, the rest of the country is growing very concerned."

Chicago’s Message - New York Times

Chicago’s Message - New York Times:
"The anti-Wal-Mart movement collided with the growing national debate about minimum wages in Chicago this week. The city council passed an ordinance requiring big retailers to pay higher wages and benefits than other businesses must. Legal challenges are bound to follow, but the council’s action should be taken as another sign that while Washington ignores the problem of living wages for workers, the rest of the country is growing very concerned."

Please Don't Feed The, umh, People

Las Vegas Makes It Illegal to Feed Homeless in Parks - New York Times

U.N. body chides U.S. over Katrina

U.N. body chides U.S. over Katrina - Hurricane Watch - MSNBC.com:
"GENEVA - The United States must better protect poor people and African-Americans in natural disasters to avoid problems like those after Hurricane Katrina, a U.N. human rights panel said Friday."Yep! Sure is hard to take the high ground when you let so many of your people drown in the mud! George, you're doing a heck of job.

Bechtel Loses Contract -- Finally!

Series of Woes Mar Iraq Project Hailed as Model - New York Times:
"BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 27: The United States is dropping Bechtel, the American construction giant, from a project to build a high-tech children's hospital in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after the project fell nearly a year behind schedule and exceeded its expected cost by as much as 150 percent."

U.S. Blows It Again In Middle East

Tide of Arab Opinion Turns to Support for Hezbollah - New York Times:

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
DAMASCUS, Syria, July 27 ? At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.
Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group?s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.
The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah?s main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.
An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a ?new Middle East? that they say has led only to violence and repression.
Even Al Qaeda, run by violent Sunni Muslim extremists normally hostile to all Shiites, has gotten into the act, with its deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, releasing a taped message saying that through its fighting in Iraq, his organization was also trying to liberate Palestine.

We had a chance to look like heroes with the Arabic peoples, but letting Israel be our attack dog and continue killing civilians indescriminately has given that same opportunity to the terrorist groups we are supposed to be fighting. Not calling for an immediate ceasefire was a mistake that keeps being repeated every time there is a camera or microphone near Bush or his cronies. Let's not forget that back in 2000, there was almost an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, but Bush took over before Clinton could close the deal and left it to rot in the sun. And now the U.S. and its allies are only making things worse.

The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan — offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — could well perish.

“If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance,” it said, “then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire.”

The Saudis were putting the West on notice that they would not exert pressure on anyone in the Arab world until Washington did something to halt the destruction of Lebanon, Saudi commentators said.

American officials say that while the Arab leaders need to take a harder line publicly for domestic political reasons, what matters more is what they tell the United States in private, which the Americans still see as a wink and a nod.

There are evident concerns among Arab governments that a victory for Hezbollah — and it has already achieved something of a victory by holding out this long — would further nourish the Islamist tide engulfing the region and challenge their authority. Hence their first priority is to cool simmering public opinion.

I don't know about anybody else, but I'm getting sick and tired of the whole world situation brought on by greedy, self-centered, dogmatic conservative bullshit and its collateral damage to everything from the environment to civilization as a whole. They are turning everything into crap in the service of their ideology and short-sightedness. It's disgusting and depressing and I'm getting to the point where I really am beginning to hate them for what they do to this world and its creatures. They are a blight that needs to be stopped before it consumes everything and everybody in a cataclysm of, if you'll excuse the expression, biblical proportions. They want this to happen! The bastards can't think of anything else being more important than their own agrandisement. They need to lose, and lose big so that people finally learn the lesson that we all have to learn to live together or it's over. Period.

BushCo Puts Profits Above Safety Of U.S. Civilians

Security and Chemical Plants - New York Times:

Nearly five years after Sept. 11, Congress has still not passed a law reducing the risk of mass casualties from an attack on a chemical plant. A bill has been slowly working its way through the Senate and the House, but the chemical industry is committed to making it so weak that it could actually make plants less safe. The House Homeland Security Committee is expected to vote tomorrow on two amendments that are important to making this a real chemical plant security bill.

The first amendment would require some high-risk chemical plants to replace the most dangerous chemicals with safer alternatives. It is a relatively mild proposal, since it does not cover all plants, and it gives the plants a large role in the decision about which safer technologies they should adopt. But the industry is fighting for its right to use whatever chemicals it deems best, or most profitable, no matter how much risk that poses to people who live, work and attend school nearby.

A second critical amendment would make clear that states have the right to regulate chemical plant safety more strictly than the federal government. The chemical industry wants the federal bill to expressly pre-empt, or invalidate, state safety rules. It says it wants a single national standard to avoid “confusion.” But what the industry really wants is a weak national standard that prevents states from taking a more serious approach to the terrorist threat.

Tomorrow’s votes will likely be decided by a few moderate Republicans, including Christopher Shays and Rob Simmons of Connecticut, and Curt Weldon and Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania. They could decide whether this important homeland security bill actually makes the nation more secure.

This is just more of the same from BushCo and friends. I don't usually repost an entire article, but this one bears repeating and stands as a call to action. If any of the Reps mentioned above are yours, please get on the horn to them and demand that they do the right thing for establishing real security here at home.

Losing The War We Made(up)

Battle for Baghdad Boils Down to Neighborhoods - New York Times:

Sending in additional troops is an implicit acknowledgment of what every Iraqi in Baghdad already knows: Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s original Baghdad security plan has failed.

In the past two weeks, more Iraqi civilians have been killed than have died in Lebanon and Israel.

The additional American forces sent here will include units equipped with Stryker armored vehicles, military police and, essentially, what is left of the American military’s reserve in Kuwait.

Sounds like we're losing this war, too, considering that it's always been worse than we're told. And BushCo won't send more troops over from here because that would be admitting they made (yet another) mistake. And in BushCoLand, admitting a mistake is much worse than making a mistake. Doing something reasonable about it is even worse than that.

Senate Removes Abortion Option for Young Girls - New York Times

Senate Removes Abortion Option for Young Girls - New York Times:
"In a statement, Mr. Bush said that “transporting minors across state lines to bypass parental consent laws regarding abortion undermines state law and jeopardizes the lives of young women.”"

Sort of like witholding sex education and access to birth control jeopardizes those same lives. Or is he talking about the fetuses' lives?

Try, Try Again

White House Bill Proposes System to Try Detainees - New York Times:
"The draft measure describes court-martial procedure as “not practicable in trying enemy combatants” because doing so would “require the government to share classified information” and would exclude “hearsay evidence determined to be probative and reliable.”"

And if the government had to reveal classified information, someone might figure out we don't have a case in many of these cases. And what good is testimony acquired by torture if we can't use it to railroad the bastards make the government's case?

Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog » Spazeboy and Me Get Chucked By Holy Joe, Bush-Style

Firedoglake - Firedoglake weblog » Spazeboy and Me Get Chucked By Holy Joe, Bush-Style

This is must-see TV! Jane and Spazeboy were denied attendance at the Clinton speech in support of Liebermann simply because they are dissenters to Holy Joe himself. I seriously doubt they would have disrupted the proceedings, and by denying their presence, the Liebermann camp made national news as being short-sighteded and exclusionary (just like somebody else we know).

Oh, and Jane's a beauty as well as an erudite blogger! Go, grrrl!

Second Typhoon in China Prompts Evacuation - New York Times

Second Typhoon in China Prompts Evacuation - New York Times:

BEIJING, Wednesday, July 26 — Typhoon Kaemi came ashore on the southern China coast on Tuesday afternoon, prompting the evacuation of more than 643,000 people in a region still recovering from an earlier storm that caused major flooding and has left 612 people dead so far.

Sounds vaguely familiar. And is this unusual for this time of year?

Summer is traditionally typhoon season in southern China, but meteorologists say the storms have arrived earlier this year. Kaemi had swept across the Philippines before hitting Taiwan on Monday night. The storm caused major disruptions on Taiwan but limited property damage and only four injuries, state media reported.

It's just going to get worse as the world warms up faster and faster. Sure makes that there Kyoto thing sound ever more important. Too bad BushCo never met an environment it liked better than it's own profits. That comes from expecting God to save their asses in the end. Fat chance! Fat asses, too.

Second Typhoon in China Prompts Evacuation - New York Times

Second Typhoon in China Prompts Evacuation - New York Times:

BEIJING, Wednesday, July 26 — Typhoon Kaemi came ashore on the southern China coast on Tuesday afternoon, prompting the evacuation of more than 643,000 people in a region still recovering from an earlier storm that caused major flooding and has left 612 people dead so far.

Sounds vaguely familiar. And is this unusual for this time of year?

Summer is traditionally typhoon season in southern China, but meteorologists say the storms have arrived earlier this year. Kaemi had swept across the Philippines before hitting Taiwan on Monday night. The storm caused major disruptions on Taiwan but limited property damage and only four injuries, state media reported.It's just going to get worse as the world warms up faster and faster. Sure makes that there Kyoto thing sound ever more important. Too bad BushCo never met an environment it liked better than it's own profits. That comes from expecting God to save their asses in the end. Fat chance! Fat asses, too.