Bush: I quit golf over Iraq war

US President George W. Bush said in an interview out Tuesday that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.

"I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal," he said in an interview for Internet hub Yahoo! and Politico magazine.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf," he said. "I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them."

The US president traced his decision to the August 19, 2003 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the world body's top official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

"I remember when de Mello, who was at the UN, got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. And I was playing golf -- I think I was in central Texas -- and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it's just not worth it anymore to do," said Bush.

Bush's last round of golf as president dates back to October 13, 2003, according to meticulous records kept by CBS news.

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MS-01: The Backbreaker

by: DavidNYC

This is it, folks. The one. The final piece of straw set atop the shambling camel of the GOP, the one which clove its desiccated humps in two.

Only it's more like a ton of bricks crushing the Republican roach.

Let's take stock of this race to see what I mean:

• This district has a PVI of R+10. It voted for Bush 62-37 in the last election. Only seven Democrats sit in comparably red seats - and not a single Republican sits in a seat as blue as this one is red. And almost every major prognosticator (at least at the start) treated this as a safe seat.


• The GOP had a perfectly serviceable candidate in Greg Davis - a standard wingnut with none of the baggage of Woody Jenkins in LA-06 or Jim Oberweis in IL-14.


• The NRCC spent $1.3 million on this race. Freedom's Crotch spent at least $400K more - and used illegal tactics to boot. And of course Davis himself raised over a million.


• They sent in Mike Huckabee, Thad Cochran, Trent Lott, Haley Barbour, and Roger Wicker.


• And when that wasn't enough, Darth Cheney came to town, to stump and raise money.


• The GOP played up Obama/Pelosi/"librul" fear-mongering to the hilt. They were shameless in exploiting whatever racial angle they thought would work.

And yet what happened? Despite all this, Travis Childers just became the newest member of the Democratic Caucus with a resounding 54-46 win. It's utterly unspinnable. Even Tom Cole knew not to try.

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Maps of Misreading

Michael Chabon fills in the blank spaces

By Anthony Miller

A number of writers have begun to exult in print about the uncanny realms where the influences of pulp and pop (comic books, science fiction and fantasy, mysteries, rock & roll) meld with those "higher" and more established echelons of literature. Michael Chabon, the author of Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, relishes secret transactions between authors and their readers. When I realized that the two Japanese students Takeshi and Ichizo in The Mysteries of Pittsburgh bore the same names as the kamikaze pilots in Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, the shock of recognition ushered me into yet another story. Here was one lesson about how one kind of fiction could subtly and surprisingly infiltrate another.

Maps and Legends (McSweeney's, $24), Chabon's first essay collection, unearths some of the author's source texts and offers his exuberant ruminations on the role of the writer as protector and defender of artistic ancestors. His intention to cast us out and off into alternate worlds is made clear from the outset with a deft touch to the book's epigraph, transforming the way we read a Melville quotation about those who have written about whaling before him merely by appending the mischievously explanatory phrase "on the writing of fan fiction." Chabon's 16 essays ponder those landscapes, whether mythological, alternate-historical, or post-apocalyptic, where entertainers and tricksters, ghosts and golems dwell. He is an exacting cartographer of those speculative spaces where only the genre of nurse romances (like Cynthia Ozick's Ruth Puttermesser, R.N.) was allowed to flourish or where one might catch a glimpse of a zeppelin ("that colophon of alternate-world fiction from Ada to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen") screaming across the sky.

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Air Force Aims for 'Full Control' of 'Any and All' Computers

By Noah Shachtman

The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is.  And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected."

The government is growing increasingly interested in waging war online.  The Air Force recently put together a "Cyberspace Command," with a charter to rule networks the way its fighter jets rule the skies. The Department of Homeland Security, Darpa, and other agencies are teaming up for a five-year, $30 billion "national cybersecurity initiative."  That includes an electronic test range, where federally-funded hackers can test out the latest electronic attacks.  "You used to need an army to wage a war," a recent Air Force commercial notes.  "Now, all you need is an Internet connection."

On Monday, the Air Force Research Laboratory introduced a two-year, $11 million effort to put together hardware and software tools for "Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement."  "Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access," a request for proposals notes, "to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms... any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware." This isn't just some computer science study, mind you; "research efforts under this program are expected to result in complete functional capabilities."

Unlike an Air Force colonel's proposal, to knock down enemy websites with military botnets, the Research Lab is encouraging a sneaky, "low and slow" approach. The preferred attack consists of lying quiet, and then "stealthily exfiltrat[ing] information" from adversaries' networks.

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Measure for Measure

Literary criticism could be one of our best tools for understanding the human condition. But first, it needs a radical change: embracing science

By Jonathan Gottschall

IT'S NOT SUCH a good time to be a literary scholar.

(STOCK PHOTO/GLOBE STAFF PHOTO ILLUSTRATION)

For generations, the study of literature has been a pillar of liberal education, a prime forum for cultural self-examination, and a favorite major for students seeking deeper understanding of the human experience.

But over the last decade or so, more and more literary scholars have agreed that the field has become moribund, aimless, and increasingly irrelevant to the concerns not only of the "outside world," but also to the world inside the ivory tower. Class enrollments and funding are down, morale is sagging, huge numbers of PhDs can't find jobs, and books languish unpublished or unpurchased because almost no one, not even other literary scholars, wants to read them.

The latest author to take the flagging pulse of the field is Yale's William Deresiewicz. Writing recently in The Nation, he described a discipline suffering "an epochal loss of confidence" and "losing its will to live." Deresiewicz's alarming conclusion: "The real story of academic literary criticism today is that the profession is, however slowly, dying."

Not every literary scholar is so pessimistic, but most would agree that the field's vital signs are bad, and that major changes will be needed to set things right.

Though the causes of the crisis are multiple and complex, I believe the dominant factor is easily identified: We literary scholars have mostly failed to generate surer and firmer knowledge about the things we study. While most other fields gradually accumulate new and durable understanding about the world, the great minds of literary studies have, over the past few decades, chiefly produced theories and speculation with little relevance to anyone but the scholars themselves. So instead of steadily building a body of solid knowledge about literature, culture, and the human condition, the field wanders in continuous circles, bending with fashions and the pronouncements of its charismatic leaders.

I think there is a clear solution to this problem. Literary studies should become more like the sciences. Literature professors should apply science's research methods, its theories, its statistical tools, and its insistence on hypothesis and proof. Instead of philosophical despair about the possibility of knowledge, they should embrace science's spirit of intellectual optimism. If they do, literary studies can be transformed into a discipline in which real understanding of literature and the human experience builds up along with all of the words.

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SUPPORT OUR VETERANS

by Jim Hightower

Politicians should not be allowed to utter the phrase "Support Our Troops" – unless they actually do.

None have shouted this phrase more insistently than the Bushites, yet they've been caught again and again shortchanging our troops on everything from protective gear to family benefits. Most damning has been the abysmal failure of Bush & Company to honor war veterans with adequate treatment here at home, and two recent cases show how empty their words really are.

First is the important, bipartisan proposal made by Sen. Jim Webb to establish a new GI Bill for veterans of Bush's war. The original version, signed in 1944 by FDR, was an enormous success, not only moving millions of vets into the middle class, but also democratizing America's college system. Just in financial terms, the investment paid for itself seven fold. Webb now wants those who are sacrificing so much in Iraq and Afghanistan to make the same gains.

But guess who says no? Bush, the Pentagon, and even John McCain. Why? It would cost too much, say these Washington warmongers, who have already thrown trillions of our tax dollars into the debacle of Iraq.

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Darth Vader Feels Blue

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Stakeholders

 "As it happens, the more time you spend working with real students in a real classroom, the less likely you are to be considered an [education] expert."...  ...Peter Berger.

The Irascible Professor

Guest commentary by Poor Elijah (Peter Berger).

It may get crowded out by super-delegates and candidate gaffes, but public education still makes it into the news cycle once in awhile.  Sometimes it's when test results are released.  Other times it's when politicians announce that that they have a plan to save our schools.

 

It's a toss-up as to whether the numbers or the candidates' sound bites ring more hollowly.  Let's start with the numbers.  From coast to coast the tests mandated by and produced for No Child Left Behind have proven so embarrassingly unreliable, unenlightening, and expensive that the miracle of modern testing is that any public officials are willing to admit they're responsible for them.  Modern assessment is the bastard child conceived by conservatives and businessmen who demanded numbers, and liberals and educators who favored squishy, subjectively scored pseudo-tests.  The result has been a discredited heap of data, an assessment system that, according to a RAND study, identifies not "good" and "bad" schools, but "lucky" and "unlucky" schools, an epidemic of inconsistencies within districts, across districts, and from state to state, and pervasive variations in the difficulty of scoring standards from one grade to the next on the same test in the same state.

 

Naturally, when the data are released, no public official stands up and admits, "My God, these numbers are worthless.  We wasted a helluva lot of money."  Instead, they issue press releases about the need to prepare students for the twenty-first century, and how they stand ready to take action.

 

Yes, armed with meaningless numbers and virtually no experience teaching actual children, the experts and your government are on the case.

 

Why doesn't that make me feel better?

 

Consider the example of one high school here in the Green Mountain State.  Whether it's good, bad, lucky, or unlucky is anybody's guess, but the school in question hasn't fared well on our state's annual assessment sweepstakes.  In an arrangement worked out with the state education department, the school has announced plans to "boost academic outcomes" by hiring a $95,000 a year "director of school improvement."  Although the principal has already written "nineteen school improvement reports," officials felt an additional administrator was needed "to concentrate full time on the school improvement process."

 

Unfortunately, what schools need more are students who concentrate full time on the school improvement process.

 

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Save America's Redrock Wilderness

Tell your senators to protect Utah's wildlands by opposing S. 2834 unless its serious flaws are fixed.

I am a defender of Utah's magnificent redrock country and I urge you to oppose S. 2834, the Washington County Growth and Conservation Act of 2008, unless its serious flaws are remedied.

S. 2834 would protect less than half of the identified wilderness-quality lands in Washington County. More of these spectacular lands should be protected. In addition, the bill does not provide sufficient protection from off-road vehicles for threatened desert tortoise habitat in the Mojave Desert or for currently protected wilderness-quality lands near Zion National Park. Furthermore, it would allow for the sale of up to 14 square miles of public lands, the majority of which have not been identified for sale through land-use planning processes, and would give a significant chunk of the proceeds to Washington County for potentially harmful development projects. In short, S. 2834 is bad for Utah wilderness and would enact into law damaging precedents for future public land bills.

For the sake of present and future generations, please stand up for the spectacular wildlands of southwestern Utah. Oppose S. 2834 unless necessary improvements are made.

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Comic Book & Cartoon Characters as Senior Citizens

Donald Soffritti has a great series of illustrations showing what some superheroes and supervillains might look like in their old age.

Along these same lines, Spirit Magazine, the inflight magazine for Southwest Airlines, recently published an article on Nickelodeon which includes a wonderful illustration of some popular cartoon and comics characters as senior citizens.

via Neatorama & Cartoon Brew

illustration by Donald Soffritti & unknown

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Vatican: It's OK to believe in aliens

By ARIEL DAVID

VATICAN CITY - Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

"How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?" Funes said. "Just as we consider earthly creatures as 'a brother,' and 'sister,' why should we not talk about an 'extraterrestrial brother'? It would still be part of creation."

In the interview by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion "doesn't contradict our faith" because aliens would still be God's creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom, he said.

The interview, headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother," covered a variety of topics including the relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and science, and the theological implications of the existence of alien life.

Funes said science, especially astronomy, does not contradict religion, touching on a theme of Pope Benedict XVI, who has made exploring the relationship between faith and reason a key aspect of his papacy.

The Bible "is not a science book," Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most "reasonable" explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single, super-dense point that contained all matter.

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I'm Bill Hicks and I'm dead now

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Chairman Conyers is worried

 

The drumbeat to war with Iran is getting louder. With only a few months left in the Bush Presidency, it's tempting to sit back and wait until November. But belligerent rhetoric and fear mongering about Iran is on the rise. In the latest example, George Bush's mouthpiece, General Petreaus, claimed that Iran's involvement is "the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq."1 Our progressive friend, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, is so worried that he is now circulating a letter to his Congressional colleagues "to register our strong opposition to possible unilateral, preemptive military action against other nations by the Executive Branch without Congressional authorization".2 Chairman Conyers isn't taking any chances and neither should we. See the fear mongering and sign the petition: http://www.truemajority.org/dontbombiran It's been six months since we started our Not Another War campaign to prevent an attack on Iran. In that time tens of thousands of you have sent messages to Congress opposing another war. And, our "IranMobile" toured eight states leading grassroots demonstrations and congressional petition deliveries, building the national movement. After Iraq, domestic spying, torture and spy gate, we can't leave the possibility of another war to chance. Congress must tie the President's hands and prevent any more wars without explicit Congressional approval. Watch the drumbeat to war and sign our petition right now: http://www.truemajority.org/dontbombiran Thanks for all you're doing to stop the march to war, -Ilya Ilya Sheyman Online Organizer   1 online.wsj.com/article/SB120821715478214431.html?mod=googlenews_wsj 2 afterdowningstreet.org/node/33389

TrueMajority.org is a grassroots group of citizens who believe in America's true values of openness, fairness and compassion. We believe participating in an effective government is the best way to be mutually responsible for our community. TrueMajority is a project of USAction, a 501(c)(4) organization under the IRS tax code.

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Pulitzer Prize for Bob Dylan

2008

SPECIAL CITATION

A Special Citation to Bob Dylan for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.

 

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Escaping the Bush

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Luxury hotels and golf: welcome to the Green Zone

Pentagon airs plan to turn Baghdad military redoubt into a chic urban oasis

by Michael Howard in Baghdad

A plan by US military planners for the "Tigris Woods Golf and Country Club" in the Green Zone in Baghdad, Iraq.

Picture, if you will, a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad's International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel, which would not look out of place in Sydney harbour. Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.

Improbable though it all may seem, this is how some imaginative types in the US military are envisaging the future of Baghdad's Green Zone, the much-pummeled redoubt of the Iraqi capital where a bunker shot has until now had very different connotations.

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Taliban ban TV in Afghan province

By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents have ordered residents of a province near the capital Kabul to stop watching television, saying the networks were showing un-Islamic programs, officials and local media said on Tuesday.

The order is the last in a wave of curbs that the resurgent militants have announced in areas they are active.

A senior Afghan information ministry official, Najib Manelai, said that dozens of masked men with weapons entered mosques in Logar province at the weekend and threatened residents against watching television

"They threatened the people that 'if you do not give up watching televisions, you will face violence'," Manelai told Reuters.

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Michael Moore readies "Fahrenheit 9/11" follow-up

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore has begun work on a "searing and provocative" follow-up to his 2004 political documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," with plans to release it next year, producers said on Tuesday.

The as-yet untitled movie is being co-financed and distributed by two small studios -- Overture Films, a subsidiary of John Malone's Liberty Media Corp, and Paramount Vantage, an art-house label of Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures.

Moore, the writer and director, began work on the project in recent months and agreed to a spring 2009 commercial release, deliberately choosing to launch the movie after this fall's U.S. presidential election, said Overture's chief operating officer, Danny Rosett.

In keeping with Moore's penchant for secrecy surrounding his projects, the studios divulged few details of his latest work except to describe it as "a searing and provocative follow-up" to "Fahrenheit 9/11."

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Somebody Painted Their Car To Look Like Hillary Clinton

And now they will have that to live with for the rest of their life.

- wonkette -

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McCain Touts Green Policies At Wind Energy Firm - But He Opposed Their Key Legislation

by Sam Stein

Over the past few years, Sen. John McCain has earned maverick stripes by taking a stance on climate change that few of his Republican colleagues share. His bucking of party orthodoxy has had its benefits on the presidential campaign trail. This Monday, for instance, the senator is slated to appear before a wind power plant to tout the merits of such environmentally friendly technologies.

"Wind power is one of many alternative energy sources that are changing our economy for the better," McCain will say, according to prepared remarks. "And one day they will change our economy forever."

But back in 2005, when McCain had the chance to vote for a bill that would have included the largest expansion of financial incentives to produce clean wind energy, he didn't. And the clean energy firm he will address today -- Vestas Wind Technology, a Portland, Oregon business planning to build the world's largest turbine factory -- is part of a trade association that pushed aggressively for the legislation.

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