Sell the National Forests???

Here's another brilliant idea from the W. Bush-leaguers. Make up for the billions blitzed on Iraq and the further billions foregone in the upper crust tax cuts by selling off big pieces of our national forests!

Did you hear about that? Probably not unless you are in a Knight Ridder Publishing city. Note:

Published on Friday, February 10, 2006 by Knight Ridder

Bush Administration Moves to Sell National Forest Land

by Seth Borenstein

Feb 10... and very little national pick-up of the story. I found it because one of Netscape's newshounds noticed it on CommonDreams.Org and posted it yesterday.

The full story is at: www.netscape.com today (Sunday 2-25-07) Here are a few excerpts:

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will unveil a proposal Friday to sell up to 200,000 acres of national forest land in "isolated parcels" ranging from a quarter of an acre to 200 acres, much of it in California.

"I am outraged, and I don't think the public is going to stand for it for one minute," said Wilderness Society policy analyst Mike Anderson. "It's a scheme to raise money at the expense of the national forests, the wildlife, recreation and all the other values that Americans hold dear. It's the ultimate threat to the national forest."

Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the proposed land sales make sense.

"Private property will end up in the possession of those who value it the most," Taylor said. "That is an iron law of economics." [Comment: The Cato Institute thinks the "Free Market" is free of any evil that might lurk in the heart of man.]

Details about what plots of land would be put up for sale are expected to be revealed at a noon press conference by Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist. [Comment: What a surprise! Another lobbyist from the regulated industry. Those Bushies -- so predictable.]

Anderson of the Wilderness Society argued that money for rural schools could come from many sources and that the land sales are being proposed "so the budget deficit doesn't get worse." He noted that if forests are sold, future federal timber sales likely would yield even less money for rural schools. [Comment: The Bushniks will do ANYTHING to make their budget deficit look not-so-awful... Anything that is except tax the rich a little more or put an end to the Iraq occupation.]

Good work, Knight Ridder, for covering this outrage. Bad work, much of the rest of media, for not making this a bigger story.

Will Kill for Oil

I had never seen the political cartoon showing George W. holding a homeless "will work for food" type sign saying "Will Kill For Oil" until today. It illustrates a powerful argument against the standard Cheney-esque position about Iraq. It's all in a great blog I just discovered http://www.theoildrum.com/ Please check it out (even though my blogging skills make you have to paste the URL in your browser).

Briefly put: "The idea is that, although Bush was wrong to get us into this war, we are there and we cannot simply pull our troops out. If we do so, then Iraq will collapse into civil war and Iran could very well take over the whole country, including its oilfields." Those are Allen Pfiefer's (the blogmeister) words.

His concise rebuttal goes like this: "This seems plausible. But when you look closely at this argument, you will see that there is nothing to support it other than the delusion that the US is fighting the good fight. There were no terrorists in Iraq before we invaded the country. The so-called insurgency is in reality a resistance. This has been a war of conquest from the start. The US troops there must terrorize the Iraqis in order to maintain any sort of ascendancy. In so doing, they demoralize the Iraqis and themselves."

As John Stewart's reporters say, "Nailed It!" Read this fellow.

Cold War Redux

How much can they screw up? Let me count the ways.

Even a news hog like me can miss an important apple now and then. The one I missed this time was how our new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is apparently trying to re-light the cold war flames. Brilliant! I've missed all the tension about imminent nuclear conflagration. It sort of keeps the worry about imminent terrorist attacks in perspective.

Just putting some of our flawed "missile defense shield" in ex-Soviet countries in Eastern Europe was enough to crank up the Russian defense spending. Check this paragraph from the Feb 9 edition of the British Guardian Limited http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2009339,00.html


In his speech to Russia's parliament, Mr Ivanov (Russia's hawkish defence minister, Sergei Ivanov) announced that the military would get 17 ballistic missiles this year, compared with an average of four in recent years. The plan envisages the deployment of 34 new silo-based Topol-M missiles and control units, as well as another 50 such missiles mounted on mobile launchers by 2015, he said. Russia has already deployed more than 40 silo-based Topol-Ms.

Were you aware the Russians are building up their ballistic missile forces?

But Secretary Gates has Bush-mouthed even more cold war reactions from the Russians. Inexplicably, he told Congress that we should be preparing for Big War with - among others - Russia. Here's a piece of one Russian report:

US Defense Minister Robert Gates called for increasing US army in order to be ready for a large-scale operation. North Korea, Iran, Russia and China are listed among potential enemies.

“We don't know what's going to develop in places like Russia and China, in North Korea, in Iran and elsewhere,” the Pentagon head said at US Senate Armed Services Committee hearings. He supported increasing military expenditures, as it will allow increasing the number of “free detachments.” http://www.regnum.ru/english/779971.html

You can imagine how that goes down in Russia? For one thing Aeroflot just canceled a big order for Boeing jets. Brilliant! (That's the apple I missed, BTW.)

So let's see... the "coalition of the willing" is falling apart, the national debt is in orbit, our veterans are being mistreated, our basic freedoms are eroding like a dust bowl corn field, our medical costs are shooting up, and NOW the Bushies are firing up the cold war just for good measure.

Brilliant.

The Walter Reed Situation… The Shame of It All

I hope you have read – or heard about in detail – the marvelous reporting by Dana Priest and Anne Hull of the Washington Post on the miserable way nearly a thousand U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are being treated in and around Walter Reed Army Medical Center. It’s a horror story in many ways, but it is especially slimy considering the responsible party has made “support our troops” its mantra. Something about hypocrisy makes me madder than just about any human weirdness.

I don’t mean The Republican Party either. This is the George W. Bush Administration failing our vets. Republicans in general are one helluva lot better that this administration. Of course we can’t let the Republicans off the hook, because they let this gang of two-faced incompetents and their cynical ideologues take control of the G.O.P.

The inhumanities at Walter Reed are just part of the story, of course. The under funded, understaffed, overworked and totally inadequate-to-the-task Veterans’ Administration is the shame of our times. The same Bush administration that demands multiple tours with little turnaround time is making our troops wait months for services they need immediately from the V.A. by not funding it adequately. All the while they snarl, “support our troops” at anyone critical of their failures.

The still new Democratic Congress had better ramp up “oversight” in a hurry. Then strap on some cojones and take action!

Goodnight, Molly

Witty to the point of hilarious.

Bright to the point of genius.

Tough to the point of nails.

She'll be missed. And missed.




Not a great picture. It is the
one she chose for the dust cover
on Bushwacked. If you haven't
read it, and can't understand
why George W. is like he is, read
it and understand.




RIP