And after that, a more compelling video:
Sarah McLachlan - World On Fire
It is estimated that providing every person in the world with safe drinking water would cost about 9 billion dollars a year.
Let's perform what Schrodinger called a thought experiment. In one case, a mind-bogglingly rich country invades and bombs the shit out of another country that hadn't threatened the first, leading to regional instability, internal strife and civil war, and hundreds of thousand of families disrupted, husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers dead and injured. Not surprisingly, this fosters resentment and creates opposition.
In a second case the same country, in lieu of the military adventurism described above, provides safe, clean drinking water not just to the second country in question, but every person in the world.
Which case will provide greater incentive to emulate the first country? Which one makes the world safer?
Let's now go back to that figure. 9 billion dollars. It's a lot, spend it over twenty years or so and we're talking real money (in the parlance of Duke Cunningham and Dennis Hastert). But let's take a look at the little counter up there in the sidebar-rama, shall we? 300+ billion.
Our priorities are fucked up. Seriously.
Our Failed Political Press ™
50 minutes ago
Time to Puncture Your Balloon!
ReplyDeleteTOTALLY OFF-TOPIC ALERT
Yep, gonna get ugly. Consider this blurb from the archives of your blog:
“In honor of the apparent effort by the White House to move on from the Chewbacca Defense in the Rove/Plame treason case, to a more…”
Well, as we know today, there wasn’t any treason at all. (In fact, that’s been known for the entire duration of this ‘scandal’.) Whatcha got to say? In case you missed it, Richard Armitage, former State Department hack, has admitted being the source of the leak.
You got no Rove. You got no Bush. Heck, you don’t even have a Scooter!
“Also so named because apparently today is the day Patrick Fitzgerald tells us who the Instigator of the Plame Affair may have been. again, woot!”
I guess that one was disappointing to you both now and then!
Well, forgive me TC, but I just couldn’t resist coming in here with these “moments in truth” for you. You must be disappointed to have your balloon popped.
I predict many more of your balloons are going to pop, the greatest of which will be on the second Tuesday of November.
John, I'm going to do my best to ignore your snide triumphalism here.
ReplyDeleteDisappointed? well, sure. Disappointed that apparently about a third of my fellow Americans prefer supporting a third rate incompetent and his band of thieving cronies to admitting they may have been wong. Disapointed that a serious security breach is difficult to proscute and treated as political game by the powers that be while real security goes begging. Disappointed in your argument.
Gonna get ugly? It got ugly in fall of 200, when a partisan Supreme Court violated all precedent to suspend the democratic process and install a cardbaord puppet as Presidnet, whose every step since has been a lie, an abject failure, or both.
So Armitage lost the draw and gets thrown under the bus. Did you ever doubt that there was going to be a sacrificial candidate? Libby's pardon won't work unless there's some kind of scapegoat.
There's the gist of the issue for me. If Armitage was the source, what's the reason for all of Libby's lying and evasions?
Yeah, I got a bit triumphalist there. Looked for a bit like Fitzgerald was entering the home stretch, and I admit I got excited. And it's truly unfortunate that Rove is going to again dodge the responsibility for his underhanded, scuz-bucket modus operandi.
But Armitage has come and gone, and I'm sorry that you feel that a man who served his country both on the battlefield and in government is a 'hack'; but Fitz continues his methodical investigation. I'll just quste Christy Hardin Smith from Firedoglake (who in addition to following he case much more closely than I have, is an attorney with some experience in related cases) "Interesting stuff. Armitage may have told Novak and Woodward that Valerie was involved in some way in her husband’s selection as the CIA’s man-on-the-ground in Niger, but it appears, according to Isikoff at least, that he did not have knowledge at that point that she was a covert operative, which is an essential piece of the charging puzzle for Patrick Fitzgerald’s prosecution."
and
"I’m with Swopa on this one. What possible motivation could Scooter Libby have had to lie unless he was (a) having an attack of personal guilty conscience and trying to save his own ass or (b) more likely, trying to save someone else’s ass, namely Dick Cheney’s."
and
"And I think Jeralyn hits the nail on the head with this observation:
Fitzgerald has long thought Armitage did nothing criminal. Yet, he indicted Libby anyway and almost indicted Rove. Novak’s original column wasn’t just gossip about Joe Wilson. It outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. But Newsweek reports Armitage didn’t know Plame’s employment was classified.
It’s curious to me that Fitz is giving Armitage and Rove a pass, but not Libby. Why? I think it has to do with the July 12 flight to Norfolk. Fitz has not yet closed his investigation. I suspect Cheney is still in his cross-hairs. And Ari Fleischer is a key witness against Libby. Somehow, I suspect Ari Fleishcher has given more to Fitzgerald than we know. (emphasis mine)
Now, isn’t that an intriguing thought? We’ve known for quite some time that Patrick Fitzgerald subpoenaed the phone records from both AFI and AFII, as well as other phone records – and that Ari Fleischer has testified and/or debriefed to some extent. But that leaves a big question mark…still…as to who was the source for Novak of the information that Valerie Plame Wilson was covert. And why Stephen Hadley thought he was going to be indicted last fall."
But if you want to feel that my balloon has been popped, go ahead. As a matter of fact, I'll inflate a whole bunch more, so you just go at it.
Thanks for looking through my archives though. Must have been painful.
Really, TC, you oughta just take it like a man: admit you were wrong (not Wong) and move on. Your bitter, hateful, libelous tone towards President George Bush would be made a bit more graceful if you would just say “Ok, I’ll give you this one. Next!”.
ReplyDeleteInstead you weave a bunch of conspiracy fantasies that are impossible to prove or disprove, and engage in a few more cheap shots against the administration.
You’re still smarting over Florida and the election of 2000. You have no case there. The Florida Supreme Court overwrote existing Florida state law to order those endless recounts. A deadline was on the books to declare the election done. The Florida Supremes overstepped, and were smacked down by the United States Supreme Court.
You don’t get to count votes, over and over, until you get the result you want. Additionally, a consortium of media giants (including the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal) did their own recount, and concluded that in no possible scenario did Al Gore win.
GWB won in 2000, fair and square.
So, you think Armitage is the chosen fall guy? If Robert Novak fingers him as his source, will you still think that? Pretty canny, that Karl Rove, to select a fall guy months ahead for a ‘crime’ that hadn’t been yet planned or committed!
All of this fuss is most likely for nothing anyway. Valerie Plame was a desk jockey for over five years before being ‘outed’ as a CIA agent. That five year period is on law as being the cutoff period for no longer being considered covert. That means no crime was committed.
A perjury charge is going to be a hard thing to prove (unless you have a blue dress with DNA samples!). And since it arose from a now-proven false investigation of the white house, it’ll be interesting to see what happens to Scooter Libby. Chances are he was nothing more than a desperation charge to begin with. Poor ol’ Fitz, he had a cakewalk compared to what Ken Starr had to go through, and he came up with nothing.
Dang, how did we on the right miss the chance to demonize Fitz, 24/7, with our willing allies in the press? We missed a trick there, that’s for sure.
“But if you want to feel that my balloon has been popped, go ahead. As a matter of fact, I'll inflate a whole bunch more, so you just go at it.”
Thanks, I’ll do that.
“Thanks for looking through my archives though. Must have been painful.”
All right, thanks for the platform.
:->