In Iraq, Shit Happens--Literally

As you go to the polls, consider this item. According to Paul Krugman at the NY Times, reconstruction is at an end in Iraq. The $21 billion allocated for reconstruction the past three years has been spent. A lot of that money has been spent on security and a lot has been simply wasted. Bechtel, one of the big inside players, is going home. No new money is in the pipe.
Emblematic of the complete failure of der Decider's Iraq gambit is Iraq's new police academy built at a cost to the American taxpayer of $75 million by Parson's Corp. The academy is so badly constructed that feces and urine leak from the ceilings. Now I ask you in all honesty, would you risk your life for somebody that craps on your head?

A Patriot's Duty

VOTE.

Beyond Ethanol

Many environmental advocates have promoted the benefits of using ethanol (ethyl alcohol) as a partial solution to our foreign oil dependence. They point out the energy independence of Brazil which uses domestic ethanol to run the vast majority of its vehicles. But there are problems with ethanol as a solution.
Most of the ethanol produced in the United States is made from the starches in corn kernels. The industry is popular in states producing large corn crops, but corn farming as it currently exists is fossil fuel dependent. Corn farming depends on chemical fertilizers that are made from natural gas and uses fossil fuel for mechanical operations. It also produces large amounts of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas more potent in trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Cellulosic ethanol is produced from grasses and agricultural waste products. It may be a "greener" source since less fertilizer and land is used to produced an equivalent amount of fuel. The non fermentable parts of the plant can also be used as fuel to drive the fermenting process, but the process of fermenting sugars from cellulose to make ethyl alcohol is more complex and expensive. Until advances are made in the cellulose process, we are stuck with corn. Corn's long term energy potential however, is limited. Roughly 15% of the crop is used to make ethanol, but this amount displaces only 2.3% of the gasoline we use every year. If by 2025, we used all of our corn crop for fuel with nothing left for food or animal feed, we would only displace 15% of our gasoline demand.
Considerations of ethanol as a solution must go beyond the environmental impacts of its production to the impacts of its use as vehicle fuel. Ethanol is currently mixed with gasoline in two major types, the commonly available 10% ethanol (E10) and the less available 85-74% ethanol blends (E85). E85 requires engine modifications and is used in flex fuel vehicles. Only half a percent of gas stations carry E85, mostly in the Midwest. E85 is preferable from an air quality standpoint since its combustion produces the fewest volatile organic compounds that are precursors to smog. E10 produces more volatile organics than pure gasoline. Only ethanol produced from cellulose can contribute significantly (63%-90% depending on blend) to reducing greenhouse gases because its production cycle does not require significant amounts of fossil fuel.
In the near term, drasticly increasing the efficiency of our new engines will save more oil than using corn ethanol as a fuel. No radically new technology is needed to obtain dramatic increases in fuel efficiency. But there is a government incentive for auto makers to produce flex fuel vehicles instead. The incentive assumes flex fuel cars and trucks use E85 half the time. In reality they only use E85 about 1% of the time. Automakers are getting more regulatory credits than they deserve. This loophole increased America's oil dependence by 80,000 barrels per day in 2005 and allowed automakers to avoid $1.6 billion in CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) non-compliance fines. Despite the failure of the flex fuel credit to reduce oil consumption Congress has reauthorize the credit until at least 2010. The corporate eye never waivers from the bottom line.

Thanks to Don MacKenzie at Union for Concerned Scientists

Dear God: Thank you for Cat Tummies....

Hmmmmm....cat tummies!

Bush: Soft on Democracy

In another bush league move, Der Decider has signed into law (PL 109-36, 2007 Defense Appropriations Act) a provision which makes it easier for him to invoke the Insurrection Act and federalize the National Guard. The change allows the President to put down public disturbances using the Guard without the consent of state governors. It is in effect, a de facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which prohibits the use of the military for domestic law enforcement. He did this on the same day he signed the odious "Torture Bill", the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that did away with writs of habeas corpus for detainees and allows their torture.
This one, two punch to democracy is without precedent in this country and extremely dangerous. Even the normally reserved Senator Leahy (D-VT) expressed his reservations on the record. It is clear Der Decider must be stopped before we are all required to shout, "SIEG HIEL". The parallels to the German Enabling Act of 1933 and the Reichstag Fire Decree are positively eerie.

Got Pombo?

Its a hard task to pick one politico that is the worst example of greed, corruption and influence peddling from the crew of the USS Ship of Fools, the GOP. But Rep. Richard Pombo of California's 11th District gets my vote. Its not just the idea of the corpulent Pombo tooling around DC in his leased Lincoln auto that he pays $7086 a year with taxpayer money. He could be satisfied with a government ride for $3096 a year. Or that he paid his brother and wife $357,325 from his political campaign funds (25% of his total) for "bookkeeping and consulting" Pombo has been named one of the Congress' 20 most corrupt legislators.

As the House Resources Committee chairman, he has the power to advance legislation in a lower house that has been transformed from a deliberative body into a majority party rubber stamp. To achieve savings of $2.4 billion in the federal budget--the estimated five year revenue from drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)--he circulated a draft bill to sell naming rights in 15 national parks. The bill was intended to influence colleagues to support drilling in ANWR, a proposal defeated by a Herculean effort of the conservation community. Even his fellow Republican, The Governator, had to ask Pombo to back off from his drilling enthusiasm. In a letter from the Ocean Protection Council, Schwarzenegger asked Pombo to drop his support for an end to the moratorium on coastal drilling. Pombo introduced serious legislation to gut the effective and popular Endangered Species Act. That bad idea was also defeated by a massive lobbying effort of which I was a part.

Even more troubling that his anti conservation agenda is his connection to influence peddling. The usual suspect is Jack Ambrahoff and his pay for play machine. The Mashpee Wampanoags are a famous for greeting the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, but they are not yet listed by the Interior Department as an "official" tribe. For thirty years the tribe has sought federal status to be eligible for federal largesse. The application was going nowhere, so four years ago they began greasing the wheels. The tribe paid out tens of thousands, some of which flowed to Abramoff and Pombo. The FBI has visited the tribes offices in Mashpee, Massachusetts to collect financial documents. A half dozen tribal leaders attended Pombo fundraisers and wrote personal checks for $2000 to his Rich PAC. About $20,000 was contributed after Pombo took a meeting with former Interior Secretary Gail Norton and the recognition program director in September 2003. The tribe's website now posts "a positive response from BIA" on their quest for recognition. Its the white man's game so you really cannot blame them for playing well.

The Abyss at the End of the Tunnel

Patrick Cockburn reporting for the British Independent newspaper has done some of the best reporting from Iraq. His latest dispatch portrays the throes of Iraq's disintergration. Sunni tribes have cut the roads out of Baghdad and are fighting Shia militia for control of villages around the city. Baghdad, outside of the green zone, is mostly under Shia control. Not wanting to be cut down in the crossfire, American troops have apparently adopted a stand back policy. Maliki's "police force" is useless, being composed mostly of Shia militia. Mixed units are starting to dissolve along sectarian lines. Upwards of a thousand Iraqis are dying in the fighting each week.
This humanitarian disaster, in which an entire society will be destroyed in violent upheaval, is the result of the insane hubris of one man, George W. Bush. No amount of twisting of another politician's words will alter that historical fact.