Have oil, will bargain

Western Sahara, a large, sand-filled land bordering Morocco, Algeria, and Mauritania recently found itself in the news after the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Richard Lugar, paid a visit under the direction of President Bush. Senator Lugar was tasked with mediating the release of 404 Moroccan soldiers that had been captured by the West Saharan political front Polisario during their long-standing feud with the Moroccan government over self-determination.

Morocco continues to claim Western Sahara despite the fact that no state currently recognizes Moroccan sovereignty over the region. What crucial US interests would prompt such an intense and active diplomatic effort in this 30 year-old post-colonial hangover? The big “O” of course.

Kerr-McGee, the infamous Oklahoma energy concern that was the defendant during the Karen Silkwood contamination trial, along with French oil giant Total/Elf, contracted with the Moroccan government to explore Western Saharan waters with the hope of finding new oil reserves. However, given the uproar over the status of Western Saharan sovereignty, the exploration consortium fell apart leaving Kerr-McGee the only company still willing to continue work. The company has a number of influential board members including former Haliburton Chairman William E. Bradford and former Arthur Andersen Audit Division Head, Robert O. Lorenz.

Oh, those ties that bind!

Chaos in New Orleans

As anyone who has ever been to New Orleans knows, the city needed a good washing.

But this is ridiculous.

Must-read: Fareed Zakaria on oil dependence and foreign policy

DC Clipmonkey just returned from a nice trip to Vermont during which he filled up his gas tank 7 or 8 times to the tune of roughly $25 at each stop (Obviously, he doesn't drive an SUV). DC Clipmonkey loved shelling out $2.50, $2.60, $2.70 per gallon and hopes that the price of gas continues to shoot up. Because only then will Americans start taking the problem of our addiction to oil seriously.

In an insightful commentary about oil consumption as foreign policy, Fareed Zakaria describes how our dependence on oil has us in a Catch-22 situation with brutal regimes throughout the Middle East.

This week, the Bush administration made a half-assed attempt to address the problem, but it will probably take $5 per gallon gas prices for our government and the American people to change their ways.

Bring it on.

A responsible path out of Iraq

The left-wing blogosphere is salivating at Bush's plummeting poll numbers, claiming they are a justification to bring the troops home. But nowhere in their emotional cries is an answer to the question of what is right both for Iraq and the U.S. Moveon.org, Daily Kos, The Nation, Cindy Sheehan, et al. are simply and irrationally spouting for our government to bring the troops home.

What happens if we abandon Iraq and a civil war breaks out? What happens if Iraq becomes like Afghanistan under the Taliban? What happens if Iran then invades Iraq? As Colin Powell foretold, we broke Iraq, now we own it. We may not have wanted this war, but we now owe it to the Iraqi people to help them stabilize their country.

Unfortunately, Nicholas von Hoffman may be right in this satirical post. On another note, this clipmonkey leaves it to George Will to remind us of the danger Democrats are courting.

A couple more differences between red and blue America

There are many obvious differences between the residents of red and blue America. In red America, they like to shoot guns, execute people, and watch NASCAR. We in blue America like to drink wine, attend gay pride parades, and listen to NPR. But there are a couple of other notable differences in the news today-

• Because the Bush Administration has failed to act, a group of nine blue state governors has just reached an agreement to reduce power plant emissions in the Northeastern United States. Another three blue state governors from the west coast are in the early stages of a similar process.
  
• Obesity continues to rise and yes, red staters have a bit more heft.

Outrage of the week: Making George Orwell proud

After cooking the numbers on the cost of the Medicare prescription drug benefit and altering reports on global warming, the Bush administration is at it again. This time they're lying to us about racial profiling by police.

These guys are indefensible.

So much for the Ten Commandments....

Not only is Pat Robertson praying for more vacancies (i.e. deaths) on the Supreme Court, now he's openly promoting assassination of a democratically-elected leader. According to Wednesday's reports, a few other Christian groups were too busy to disagree with Reverend Pat. Pretty soon they'll be installing statues depicting the Nine Commandments in a government building near you.

This kind of insane rhetoric is exactly why laws defining the separation of church and state need to be cast in iron and coated with titanium.

Buyer's remorse

It's too bad presidential elections are held every four years. Check out the bad news for Bush here. There's even more startling news for Bush in his state-by-state approval ratings here.

Op-ed: Bush's stain on our nation

There are plenty of reasons to despise President Bush- his favoritism for the wealthy, his blustery talk (especially given his unwillingness to serve in Vietnam), the fact that tens of thousands of people have died because of his policies, or his use of religion for political purposes.

But no reason stands out more than his administration's stance on torture. In endorsing torture, Bush has brought shame on our nation and endangered us all. Our soldiers in Iraq are the most vulnerable because of this policy, but ultimately, all of us are at a greater risk of terror because our president did not clearly and emphatically lay out a policy that banned torture.

By "playing cute" with the Geneva Conventions, as Sen. Lindsey Graham likes to say, President Bush has necessitated that members of Congress set the rules by which we treat detainees. Republican Sens. Graham and John McCain have admirably led this effort. It's just embarrassing that it has been left to them. Members of Bush's own military urged the Administration to prohibit torture, but shiny-loafered lawyers at the Justice Department tried to redefine the meaning of torture and the meaning of the Geneva Conventions.

Millions if not billions of people around the world hate us. Some can't stand our cultural and economic dominance. Others loathe us because of our support for Israel or our stationing of servicemembers in the Middle East. Still others hate us because we coddle repressive regimes while talking a good game about freedom and democracy.

Then there are the paranoids who hate us because they believe we want to destroy them. They think we want to wipe out the Arab world. And now, with the invasion of Iraq and the events at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and God knows where else, we've fed their paranoia. We have no designs on empire, despite what many liberal conspiracy theorists say, but who is going to listen to us now?

The damage to our nation's standing has been done. The question is now what we can do to repair it. Unfortunately, Karen Hughes is not the answer.

About John Roberts

DC Clipmonkey finds it ridiculous how folks on the left and right are getting into such a tizzy over John Roberts. To those on the left, who the hell did you expect Bush to nominate, Alan Dershowitz? To those on the right, please read the New Testament before we discuss this any further.

In total, the guy seems like a solid conservative who also happens to be a decent human being. Leave him alone and save your fire for some battles you can actually win.

Punished for adultery, but not for torture

The perversion of moral values by conservative Christians has not only taken over our political landscape, but also our military. Yesterday, the Army relieved Four-Star General Kevin Byrnes of his command because of an extramarital affair he had with a civilian.

Although Gen. Byrnes's affair is clearly a violation of the military's code of conduct, it certainly is not a crime that endangers us all and humiliates our nation. No, that crime would be practicing torture on detainees. Despite abundant evidence that the use of extreme tactics was approved by officials at the very top of the US government, not a single high-ranking member of the military, or any of their civilian enablers, has faced any significant punishment for this dark episode in American history. In fact, the only person punished in a significant way is Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the useful idiot "in charge" of the Abu Ghraib prison.

Not even Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, the fellow who once claimed about a Muslim adversary, "I knew my God was bigger than his," has been disciplined for making this and other more outrageous statements WHILE IN UNIFORM. The guy hasn't even been punished for failing at his actual duties- finding Osama bin Laden and aiding in the Iraq War. Boykin alone may be responsible for turning more people into anti-American terrorists than President Bush.

Remember, this is the same military, aided by civilian enablers, that runs out the few Arabic-speakers serving in it because they're gay.

God help us.

None of this is to say that adultery is not wrong, but there is a question of proportionality. Is it a greater crime to hurt your family or embarrass and endanger your country?

Dems and values

Regular readers of this site know that DC Clipmonkey bristles with rage at Republican claims that their party better represents the albeit-nebulous term "moral values." The idea that a party that eagerly supports the death penalty, torture, and bombing other countries, shows little regard for the environment, and cuts funding for services to the poor at every opportunity, is morally-upright is laughable. This month's Harper's describes the absurdity of this notion in great detail.

Ultimately, it is merely a function of marketing. Republicans are simply better at it. But many Democrats are finally getting the point, led by the Rev. Jim Wallis. In today's NYT, Wallis lays out how the Democrats can reclaim the values mantle.

Excerpt:

"...somebody must lead on the issue of poverty, and right now neither party is doing so. The Democrats assume the poverty issue belongs to them, but with the exception of John Edwards in his 2004 campaign, they haven't mustered the gumption to oppose a government that habitually favors the wealthy over everyone else. Democrats need new policies to offer the 36 million Americans, including 13 million children, who live below the poverty line, as well as the 9.8 million families one recent study identified as 'working hard but falling short.'"

Outrage of the week: Drunken sailors in Congress

Like a band of sailors rolling into a port town full of bars and prostitutes, members of Congress continue to empty their wallets, actually our wallets, via the latest transportation bill. Here are some of the more egregious earmarks:

• $200,000 for a deer avoidance system in Weedsport, N.Y.
• $330 million for a highway in Bakersfield, Calif.
• $480,000 to rehabilitate a historic warehouse on the Erie Canal.
• $3 million for dust control mitigation on Arkansas rural roads.
• $2.3 million for landscaping on the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California.

The worst perpetrator of all, as always, was Alaska, which means "the land of government waste" in the Inuit Language. The third-least populated state received $941 million - the fourth most in earmarks - courtesy of its lone representative, Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young. $231 million of it was for a bridge near Anchorage to be named "Don Young's Way."

Even worse, Congress is hiding how much it actually spent behind some accounting tricks that would make Enron proud. So much for fiscal conservatism.

A middle finger to the world

Nominating John Bolton through a recess appointment is a giant f-you to the rest of the world. The guy is insane, incompetent, and a human affront to the United Nations. This appointment reminds this clipmonkey once again that we need to reclaim our country from these corrupt, Bible-misusing, torture-loving, UN-hating, innocent people-bombing, oil-loving, job-outsourcing bastards ASAP.

Here's what this clipmonkey wrote when the Bolton nomination was first announced.