Bush Giving Freedom Medals To Iraq War Buddies

[UPDATE]:

Just found out on Countdown that this is likely the reason the Obama family was forced to seek lodging in a hotel: John Howard is the one staying at Blair House, traditional residence of president-elects and their families before their inauguration.

I'm sure no one could have anticipated scheduling this medal ceremony for January 13 would have interfered with something else important happening in the middle of the month. Sheesh.

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Oh goodie, another BS ceremony President Bush can preside over:

Blair gets US medal as era ends

The award by President Bush of the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Tony Blair marks not only the close alliance between the two men but the end of an era of British-American relations.

The former British prime minister will receive his medal, the highest civilian honour given by the United States, at the White House on 13 January.

Also receiving the medal will be the former Australian prime minister John Howard and Colombian President Alvaro Uribe - also allies in Mr Bush's "war on terror" and the war in Iraq.

Whew it just doesn’t get more pathetic than that. A week before the inauguration of President-elect Obama, Mr. Bush seems bound and determined to stage one last piece of kabuki theater for the handful of remaining sycophants and supporters who still believe the Iraq War was a splendid idea.

From the Memory Hole, here are some other Iraq War players who got their Medal of Freedom:






Good times, good times.

The Architect Of English Only

Sean Braisted must donate to the same causes that I do: the Southern Poverty Law Center has plowed through the letters of anti-immigration crusader John Tanton, stored in a file at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan. The result: an explosive look at the racist/nationalist who has donated $20,000 to seeing Eric Crafton’s English Only referendum become Metro Nashville law.

I first wrote about John Tanton last August. The man clearly holds fringe, racist beliefs: Jews, Catholics, Latinos, Asians, African-Americans--anyone who is not a white Christian is a threat to white supremacy, in his twisted worldview:

John Tanton has not merely flirted with and adopted many of the core ideas of white nationalism over the past three decades. He has carried on correspondences with some of the key leaders of the white nationalist movement, meeting and even vacationing with some of them, and pushing many of their central ideas.

Over the years, his closest friend on the white nationalist scene seems to have been Jared Taylor, the man who began publishing American Renaissance, a racist, pseudo-scientific magazine focusing on race, intelligence and eugenics, in 1990. ("When blacks are left entirely to their own devices," Taylor wrote in its pages a few years ago, "Western civilization — any kind of civilization — disappears.")

What’s frightening is that Tanton has legitimized his fringe views via groups like U.S. English and FAIR, which have exported the mechanism for enforcing these views to communities all around the country. If Nashville approves Crafton’s English Only referendum, we will be the largest city in the country to approve a major plank in John Tanton’s bigoted platform.

Yesterday Braisted posted :

The question we must ask ourselves is how much of a foot in the door do we want to allow the white nationalists from outside Nashville to have? Do we want this city to be the beacon of hope for every two bit hack who thinks his genetic makeup is superior to all others?

I’m going to take this a step further. I don’t think we need to worry about giving white nationalists from outside Nashville a foot in the door so much as we need to worry about empowering those already here. A legislative win will only emboldens the bigotry of Tennessee's nativist groups. If this is a success in Nashville, it will spread across the state.

Racism exists in Nashville just as it exists everywhere in some form or another. Do we want to endorse such beliefs in a special election?

I hope not.

Surrender Normothy

I just wanted to say that, you know, for old times’ sake.

Al Franken has been certified the winner of the Minnesota Senate race, and the Minnesota Supreme Court has a rejected a Coleman attempt to add more ballots to the recount.

It looks like the Coleman camp is running out of options and is just throwing up unrealistic roadblocks for the sake of being pissy.

And I really don’t want to hear any quips about what a “comedian” like Franken is doing in the U.S. Senate. This is Minnesota, they elected a professional wrestler as Governor. Guess that’s how they roll up there.

Trading One Republican Palace For Another

The latest news from Baghdad concerns the inauguration of the beleaguered $700 million, 104-acre military base “embassy” inside the Green Zone.

This is the same military base “embassy” that was the subject of an angry letter from Rep. Henry Waxman when the building’s construction went over budget and behind schedule. The thing was built by private contractor First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., which of course received a no-bid contract after the U.S. State Dept. waived a law requiring open and competitive bidding.

First Kuwaiti GT&C then found itself under criminal investigation for gross human rights abuses it perpetrated while building our U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

We should be so proud. It is, to quote Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, “a symbol of the deep friendship between the two peoples of Iraq and America."

Indeed what a perfect symbol it is.

The TVA Board That Operates Like A Business

Not to put too partisan of a spin on things here, but when the inspector general issues a report questioning TVA’s regulatory compliance and management practices, and one remembers that the TVA Board of Directors “sets policy and strategy for TVA,” one should also remember the recent changes to the TVA Board, which make it for all intents and purposes a Republican operation.

The TVA board used to consist of three members, nominated by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. In November 2004 the board was expanded to nine members, a scheme concocted by Tennessee Senators Bill Frist and Lamar Alexander to “modernize the management structure” and “lead to more accountability at TVA,” and which was implemented without any congressional hearings of any type.

In 2008 Frist called the new board a resounding success:

Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican who wrote the changes in TVA’s governance, said the new system has been “very positive” and helped the utility run like most businesses with a policy-making board overseeing management under a chief executive officer.
 
“To have an identity operating under a 1933 structure in 2008 simply would have been unsatisfactory,” Dr. Frist said. “Over time, I think the board should be more nonpartisan and we can get away from using that position as political patronage but having people who are extremely well qualified. The intent was to get politics out of the system, and I think that has been achieved.”

"Over time” being GOP-speak for “the time when Democrats are in the White House.” Right now, the board is comprised almost entirely of Republicans--the only non-Republican being Bishop William H. Graves of Memphis, a senior bishop of the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church and a registered Democrat who happened to co-chair Shelby County’s Bush-Cheney 2004 re-election campaign. Good Democrat there, rightey-o.

This blatant partisan power grab prompted current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to hold up a couple of board confirmatons in the interest of getting more political diversity on the panel. This in turn resulted in much whining and stomping of feet from Tennessee Republican Senators Corker and Alexander. Reid, who’s got the spine of an overcooked linguine, of course caved, resulting in much happy dancing in the offices of Corker and Alexander.

And yes, that would be the same Alexander who sits on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which will conduct hearings into the TVA coal ash spill next week.

Oh my, things are getting curiouser and curiouser. Could we have a conflict of some type, Senator Alexander? You are conducting hearings into an accident at a TVA plant when you basically are one of the architects of the current TVA board, and battled the Senate Majority Leader over the confirmation of some board members? I wonder if his questions will be of the “may I pray for you” variety.

As for the rest of the board , in the grand Republican tradition of “operating government like a business” it is made up of Republican donors and patrons:

Most of those appointed to the TVA board over the past two years by President Bush have been Republican activists and financial supporters of GOP causes. Robert “Mike” Duncan from Kentucky is chairman of the Republican National Committee, and Susan Richardson Williams, who is awaiting confirmation for another term, was previously chairwoman of the Tennessee Republican Party. TVA Chairman Bill Sansom, a Knoxville businessman, served in the Cabinet of U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., when Sen. Alexander was Tennessee’s governor.
 
Collectively, the eight people appointed or nominated to the TVA board by the Bush White House, and their spouses, gave $592,405 to Republican candidates and organizations since 1994, according to a Chattanooga Times Free Press compilation of campaign records. Four of the board appointees also contributed lesser amounts to Democratic candidates.

The GOP tilt to the new board is one of the unintended consequences of adopting the TVA board change without congressional hearings in 2004, Mr. Crowell said.
 
“All the board members will now be of the same political party, which I don’t think reflects the diversity of opinion in the Tennessee Valley,” he said. “There also appears to be a lot of importance put in these appointments to where people live, which encourages them to represent those areas and not the broader interests of TVA.”

Getting back to where our story started, it’s interesting to me that Frist and Alexander expanded the TVA board to make it “operate more like a business,” supported President Bush when he filled it with cronies and party patrons, and now we have an inspector general’s report showing this:

According to an IG report dated March 4, 2008, on leaks in the flue gas ductwork at the Widows Creek Fossil Plant in Alabama, TVA put "business operations" ahead of "ethics and compliance issues" at the steam plant.

According to the report, while the duct work problems were addressed and management made efforts to repair the leaks, "the emphasis was on efforts to contain the leaks while keeping the plant operating until the next major outage."

The report says little consideration was given by TVA officials of reporting the "continuous nature and extent of the leaks" to Alabama environmental authorities.

"Rather, the leaks were addressed as a safety or maintenance issue and not a permit issue. We also found no evidence that ethics and compliance issues were considered, presumably because of the emphasis on business operations," the report concludes.

[...]

Meanwhile, a February 2008 TVA inspection report of the Kingston steam plant showed a TVA fly ash retention pond has had leaks, seepage and water-logged walls for years before the Dec. 22 failure. The report shows TVA knew about leaks at the site for more than two decades.

Well, that sounds about right. I was shocked when CNN reported that TVA’s priority after the Kingston coal ash accident was “clearing the railroad tracks .. because that's how they get the coal into the plant.”

Remarked Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy:

"TVA has the heavy-duty emphasis on cost-cutting, on keeping the plants running without any downtime," he said. "(TVA's emphasis) is on nothing to slow the production of electricity. I don't have the exact set of what all the metrics are that all these executives get bonus pay for, but I'm reasonably confident it's associated with cost-cutting and uptime, not downtime (of plants). Bringing plants down may be frowned on because it may be in conflict with how an employee gets compensation.

And this:

How the Tennessee Valley Authority decided to stabilize Kingston's ash landfill would have implications for its many other elevated waste dumps, an important tool in the agency's strategy to maximize its storage on-site and avoid more costly options.

A Tennessean review of state records and some TVA documents shows that top officials rejected solutions that were deemed "global fixes" because they were simply too costly. The most expensive option was listed at $25 million.

In the end, TVA chose to install a series of trenches and other drainage mechanisms to try to relieve the water pressure and give the walls more stability.

On Dec. 22, the walls gave way.

You’d think the oh-so-business-like TVA Board, were it not filled with cronies and big GOP donors, might put the utility's emphasis on safety, ethics, and accountability, not profits. Because this clean-up is going to cost a lot more than $25 million.

But that’s not “business-like,” I guess.

If Only We Had A War Of Our Own They Could Cover

MediaBistro reports the cable news media is dispatching reporters to the Israel-Gaza border.

Meanwhile, over in Iraq:

TV News Winds Down Operations on Iraq War

Quietly, as the United States presidential election and its aftermath have dominated the news, America’s three broadcast network news divisions have stopped sending full-time correspondents to Iraq.

“The war has gone on longer than a lot of news organizations’ ability or appetite to cover it,” said Jane Arraf, a former Baghdad bureau chief for CNN who has remained in Iraq as a contract reporter for The Christian Science Monitor.

Time for a new war I guess. The old one was a ratings dud.

Poisoned Rivers Thanks To 'Clean' Coal

Hey, Gov. Bredesen! You might want to drop that handful of coal ash sludge.

The EPA has released its sludge test results and it ain't pretty:

At one point in the Emory River, just downriver from the disaster site, arsenic levels in the water registered 149 times higher than the federal limit for safe drinking water. The same spot registered lead levels five times higher than normal, as well as unsafe levels of antimony, beryllium, cadmium and chromium, and elevated levels of a dozen other chemicals.

Although the TVA's Web site boasts a prominent photo of Gov. Phil Bredesen handling a glob of sludge barehanded, experts are urging Tennesseans not to follow suit.

"We're asking people to limit contact with the (coal) ash material, to wash their hands and clothing after coming in contact with it. Don't let your children and animals play in the ash," EPA spokeswoman Laura Niles said.

As the lightweight ash dries, it could become airborne and irritate the lungs and skin. The TVA is working on dust control as it searches for a more permanent solution.

[...]

So far, Kingston's drinking water has tested safe. The intake for the city water system is upstream from the spill and has registered high levels of only one poison, thallium.

Thallium, of course, is a poison favored by mystery writers and KGB agents. And nothing has yet been released about possible radioactivity of any of this stuff.

I do have a question about all of this, which hasn’t really been addressed: If the Emory flows into the Clinch, and the Clinch flows into the Tennessee, and the Tennessee flows across the state, right through Bob Corker Country and then north into the Ohio, what are the chances that this poisonous stuff will spread its toxic load all across the state? And how many communities pull their water from this river system downstream? What are the risks associated with that?

Meanwhile, this seems to be yet another example of warnings ignored, and the feds shirking their responsibility to protect citizens. I guess they thought the free hand of the market would take care of everything for them.

Blind Faith

Via Christian G at NiT comes this quote from Roane County Emergency Management Director William Rose:

So, that is a resounding question from the people in the county is "all this information that's been put out I don't know what to believe." Well, I'm telling you what to believe. You believe what these people down here are telling you to believe because I'm seeing the data just like everybody else is. I don't understand it all, but they explain it to me, and I got faith in these people down here and what they do.

Wow, if I didn’t know better I’d say Roane County’s Emergency Management Director just told the people he’s supposed to protect to shut up, quit whining, and do what they’re told.

Let’s see, the last time someone in the government told me to believe them, we ended up sending over 4,000 American soldiers to their deaths in Iraq. There was also the time the EPA told folks in Manhattan that the air around Ground Zero was safe. And then there was FEMA handing out toxic trailers to those left homeless by Hurricane Katrina.

So I can't blame the good people of Roane County for being a little skeptical about what they're hearing from the government right now, can you?
 Especially when what they see with their own lying eyes contradicts what they've been told by "these people down here":

My Grandson became sick yesterday... Cough.... stuffy nose.... sneezing..... flushed..... didn't want to eat..... not wanting to nap either....

It was windy yesterday just like the day before... and the ash had to be flying.

I took him to the ER as recommended by his physician.  I took the information that TVA had given me, as well as a MSDS sheet about fly ash. 

He had to endure a nasal wash & suction, x-rays, monitoring of his oxygen levels.  The conclusion?  Irritation from the fly ash, specifically airborne. 

TVA is aware, and we are currently at a local hotel.  The Doctor recommended that he not go home... we not go home....avoid the area altogether. 

Here’s something else you can believe:

Among the surprising conclusions: the waste produced by coal plants is actually more radioactive than that generated by their nuclear counterparts. In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

At issue is coal's content of uranium and thorium, both radioactive elements. They occur in such trace amounts in natural, or "whole," coal that they aren't a problem. But when coal is burned into fly ash, uranium and thorium are concentrated at up to 10 times their original levels.

Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas.

Hey, Mr. Rose. Some of "these good people" are getting sick. Believe that one, if you can.

We Said No No No But He Heard Yes Yes Yes

Early voting for Nashville’s English Only referendum begins today. This referendum making English the official language of the city of Nashville has been universally reviled across a broad spectrum of our community:

• It has been opposed by Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, who notes English Only will inhibit the city’s economic development outreach to foreign countries.

• It has been opposed by our college and university leaders, who say the measure would negatively impact education.

• It has been opposed the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, noting (among other things) that a city with an unwelcoming and regressive image will have trouble luring international businesses.

• It has been opposed by the Nashville Convention & Visitors Bureau because it “sends the wrong message” to visitors, those employed in the hospitality industry, and business leaders.

• It has been opposed by a diverse coalition of Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith leaders, who note this goes against their respective religious traditions of hospitality and welcoming the foreigner.

• It has cost the city over $300,000.

• It was forced down the throats of Nashville voters with out of state financing from a renowned racist.

My prediction: it will pass.

Welcome to Nashville, where ignorance is bliss.

If Nashville does approve this measure it will be the largest city to do so, but it will by no means be the last. Expect success in Nashville to be followed by English Only measures across the state and across the country. Conservatives are at their best when they're beating up on brown people.

I Guess It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time

Remember President Bush’s grand plan to “fix” Social Security with “private accounts"?

Remember when John McCain supported the idea?

Here’s a sobering thought:

Investors begin 2009 licking their wounds from the worst year on Wall Street since the Great Depression, one that left many portfolios devastated and their owners scrambling for safety.

• The Russell 3000, which covers 98 percent of investable equities, shed $6.7 trillion or 39.7 percent of its value during 2008.

• The S&P 500 was down 38.5 percent, its worst performance since 1937.

• The Dow Jones industrial average was off 33.8 percent — the worst return since 1931.

• The five worst-performing stocks in Silicon Valley all lost more than 90 percent of their value.

• Every single technology index fell this year. Biotech did the "best," with a 17.7 percent drop; Internet, computer, networking and semiconductor stocks all were down more than 40 percent, and disk-drive stocks were off nearly 61 percent.

Pension funds took a massive hit this year:

With the stock market shedding more than a third of its value this year, pension funds at big companies have been battered beyond recognition. What looked like safe stowaway spots where corporations securely tucked away assets for their employees' retirements now look like roller-coaster funds. In addition to sending shivers up the spines of employees who count on that income, the problem also threatens to haunt the bottom line at many major firms.

Can you imagine the effect on American society if not only pension funds but also the Social Security safety net were invested in the stock market right now?

Thank God we dodged that bullet.