The Blue State

Energy costs are concerning analysts, not to mention American families

Most Americans are not too happy with the way the President is handling the energy crisis.  This is a survey from the latest ABC News/Washington Post Poll (PollingReport.com):

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation     with gasoline prices?"

Approve - 22%
Disapprove - 73%
Unsure - 6%

"Have recent price increases in gasoline caused any financial hardship for you or others in your household, or not?"

Have - 66%
Have Not - 34%

"Do you think there's anything the Bush Administration reasonably can do to reduce gasoline prices, or do you think gas prices have risen because of factors beyond the Administration's control?"

Can Do Something - 60%
Beyond Their Control - 36%
Unsure - 4%

Speaking of energy costs, gasoline prices rose yet again.  According to Bloomberg News, the President has decided to tap into the U.S. energy reserves -- something that he has spoken against doing until this point (other than Hurricane Ivan).  This desperate move will not mean much until the U.S. can get the oil refineries that were damaged from Hurricane Katrina back up and running (Bloomberg):

The government's oil ``is not going to be of much helpunless we get refineries running again,'' Adam Sieminski, globaloil strategist at Deutsche Bank AG in New York, said before theannouncement. ``Releasing oil from the SPR right now would beactually inappropriate because there would be no place to putit.''

Gasoline futures touched a record $2.925 a gallon today onthe New York Mercantile Exchange as refineries remained idlealong the coast. Fuel wholesalers across much of the U.S.yesterday started curtailing deliveries to filling stations andconvenience stores because of the refinery and pipelineshutdowns. Deborah White, an oil analyst at Societe Generale SAin Paris, said pump prices will soon reach $3 a gallon.

Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute,said emergency oil from the reserve is ``very, very valuable'' torefineries in the area that weren't shut down.

``You have to keep the feedstock, i.e. crude oil, going tothem if you're going to have any hope of keeping them up andrunning,'' Cavaney said at a news conference in Washington.

This is what happens when demand for oil is so high.  Any short-term supply-side shock can be disastrous to not just oil prices, but the overall economy as well.  Analysts are predicting this winter that home heating bills will soar.

Cindy's ends stay at Crawford and begins bus tour

Cindy packed up and left Camp Casey today and is getting ready for a month-long bus tour around the eastern half of the country to continue to rally against the war in Iraq:

Here is a list of where the tour will stop

The antiwar mother of a fallen hero told reporters today before she stepped into the bus that this month started with a thought and ended with a movement:

"When I first started here, I was sitting in the ditch thinking, 'Whatthe heck did I do? Texas in August, the chiggers, fire ants,rattlesnakes, uncomfortable accommodations' -- but I'm going to be sadleaving here.  I hope people will say that the Camp Caseymovement sparked a peace movement that ended the war in Iraq and thatCamp Casey was a place for love and hope."

Whether or not you agree with pulling all the troops out of Iraq immediately -- which I don't -- you still have to hand it to Cindy Sheehan for raising awareness about the most important issue facing America.  This is a subject that until now was dominated by one viewpoint (Bush), while everyone else's opinion on Iraq was drowned out because the mainstream media was too lazy to cover it.  Now that both sides are getting their equal say, it is up to the rest of us in the middle to hear both sides, find a pragmatic solution to the mess we are in and hold our representatives accountable.

Man-made stampede in Iraq kills nearly one-thousand

One of the worst tragedies of the Iraq war occurred today.  Nearly one-thousand Iraqis were killed during a stampede that was set off out of fear that there was a suicide bomber in the area.  Today was supposed to mark one of the most important Shiite holidays as more than one-million people gathered into the streets in celebration.  As the Christian Science Monitor reports, the festivity turned into a man-made stampede and will go down as one of the worst things to ever happen since the invasion (Christian Science Monitor):

At 8 a.m., mortars and Katyusha rockets slammed into two neighborhoods near the shrine, killing 15 and injuring about 30.

An hour later, victims of poison - apparently in the free food andwater available along the pilgrims' route - trickled into hospitals,according to Iraq's Health Minister. A leading Shiite politicianalleged that 100 people were killed by poison.

Then at 10 a.m., the wave of the tragedy crested and broke. As tensof thousands of Shiite pilgrims poured onto the Bridge of the Imamstoward the shrine, backing up at the end of the bridge to be checkedfor explosives, men in the crowd began shouting there was a suicidebomber, survivors say.

The crowd then surged. Strong men pushed and shoved to get to safety. Children, women, and the old were trampled.

On the bank across from Khadimiya, home of Imam Kadhim's mausoleum,pilgrims unaware of the panic kept piling up at the foot of the bridge,serving as a tragic cork in a bottle.

The pilgrims caught in the middle of stampede began to stack up onthe bridge's span. Thousands tumbled over the railings, 50 feet intothe murky waters of the Tigris River. Many of the people were unable toswim.

As the Monitor went to press, Iraqi health authorities said at least700 mostly women and children were confirmed dead in the stampede, andat least 300 wounded. They said the death toll could top 1,000. It wasthe second most deadly incident at a Muslim pilgrimage; a stampede atMecca during the Haj pilgrimage in 1990 killed 1,426 people.

This is what happens when insurgents get into the psyche of peace-loving Iraqis.  Most civilians are scared out of their minds because security on the country's infrastructure is so depleted in certain parts of the country.  The U.S. either needs to get help from the international community in bringing in more boots to restore order, continue down Bush's road of 'staying the course' without much explanation, or we need to leave.  I like the first option the most.

He said it: We're in Iraq because of oil

President Bush admitted today that we are fighting the war in Iraq for oil.  You think I am kidding, right?  This was in his speech today (WhiteHouse.gov):

"If Zarqawi and bin Laden gain control of Iraq, theywould create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks; they'dseize oil fields to fund their ambitions; they could recruit moreterrorists by claiming an historic victory over the United States andour coalition."

And he waited until now to tell us this?  Because the arguments about weapons of mass destruction, Osama's Iraq connection and democracy in the Middle East didn't all pan out, the White House needed a new reason to give the American people as to why we are still fighting this long and costly war.  The newest reason is oil.  Has this been the motive all along?  Maybe years from now we will find that out.  One thing I do know is that Bush is running out of new reasons to spin at the same time as a majority of Americans are growing evermore impatient.

Nation mourns together after Katrina passes

(Courtesy of M. e. Cohen, Cagle Cartoons)

Poverty rate on the rise

President Bush is often quick to tout the low unemployment rate.  But the mathematical employment statistic only factors in Americans looking for work.  Those that have given up looking for work are not part of the equation -- just as any economist or professor will tell you.  Over the last two years, just as our unemployment has gone down and our GDP has gone up, a record number of Americans have dropped out of the labor force all together.

In the most recent study, the U.S. poverty rate is on the rise as well (Christian Science Monitor):

Despite a year in which the US economy added jobs, the percentage ofAmericans living in poverty grew from 12.5 to 12.7 percent last year -the fourth straight year it's risen.

That increase, reported in the much-anticipated annual Census Bureaustudy Tuesday, surprised many analysts who had expected the number todrop along with unemployment....While the means of calculating the statisticshave drawn criticism from both the right and the left, many experts seethe annual figures as a useful yardstick by which to measure progressover time. And for some, the lack of long-term improvement isparticularly troubling.

"There is still a generation of no progress against poverty," saysSheldon Danziger, codirector of the National Poverty Center at theUniversity of Michigan. "Somehow, we have to confront the fact that ...a rising economy no longer lifts all boats."

Health care costs, sales taxes, home energy, education, and the pay at the pump are all just part of the overall cost of living for each American family.  In each of these areas the burden is being shifted back onto the family at the same time as many of the companies responsible for the high costs are being subsidized by our tax dollars.  So GDP increases and the low unemployment rate do not say anything about the cost of living that is consistently forcing more Americans into poverty.

 

Confirming the drop in support

Washington Post/ABC News just released their batch of surveys that they do every two months.  Although the numbers are a bit higher for Bush than in other polls, they are still the lowest of any Washington Post/ABC News survey.  Because the survey has 44 questions, I am just going to put the link:

Click here to view (PDF)

Overall, it confirms the correctness of the drop in Bush's approval that other polls suggest.  Cindy Sheehan has helped ignite further debate about the specificity of the President's exit strategy, or the lack thereof, in Iraq.

Another stat I found interesting was the fact that the President has much more support when it comes to Social Security.  Approval of the way he has handled that issue jumped 6% since June, and the disapproval fell 10%.  Nonetheless, a majority of Americans still oppose Social Security privatization.

 

GOP's 'abstinence-only' teachings hurting fight against AIDS in Uganda

The issue that I have often praised President Bush for has to do with his pledge to help tackle A.I.D.S. in Africa.  But lately his emphasis has slowly been unraveling.  The effort to help prevent the spread of HIV in Africa is being hijacked by the far-right wing of the GOP.  United Nations envoy Stephen Lewis is warning the Bush Administration that their Evangelical-based abstinence-only education teachings are reducing the quantity of condoms in African countries like Uganda (BBC):

"Over the last eight to 10 months, there's been a verysignificant decline in the use of condoms, significantly orchestratedby the policies of government...At the moment, the government of Uganda appears to beunder the influence of the American policy through the presidentialinitiative of emphasizing abstinence far and away over condoms."

Right now is the moment of truth.  We have made so much progress in the last few years to raise awareness about this devastating plague in Africa.  The Live 8 concert earlier this summer brought the world together around this cause to bring about a much-needed change of direction.  Are we going to let this process unravel due to the ignorant political agenda of those connected to elitist conservatives like Pat Robertson, or can we be a little bit more pragmatic about the root cause of HIV? 

Abstinence is without a doubt the most effective form of birth control.  Condom use is second on the list.  Are we going to let the fringe views of the right-wing prevent us from teaching both?  Condom use not only helps reduce the risk of developing STD's such as HIV, but the widely recognized form of birth control will also stop unwanted pregnancies -- a concern correlating with the very serious issue of overpopulation that has contributed to the decline in economic wealth in the south.

Conservatives attacking conservatives for not being extreme enough

Last weekend in Crawford pro-war conservative activists staged a "Cindy Doesn't Speak for Me" rally.  During the rally a number of conservatives happened to have some signs that were not extreme enough for the rest of the right-wing crowd.  A crowd gathered and stomped on the signs, and heckled the young individuals all the way back to their cars.  There is home video footage that captures all of this. 

But first, read this excerpt that further explains this whole incident (IndyBay.org):

About two thousand people converged in Crawford yesterday for the“Cindy Doesn’t Speak for Me” rally. “Gold Bless America, God Bless theTroops, and God Bless President Bush” was the theme of the day.Favorite chants included, “Cindy Go Home!” and “What’s Our ExitStrategy? Victory!” Many of the speakers were AM radio talk show hostsfrom across the country.

The theme of most of their speecheswas that Cindy Sheehan was prolonging the war by giving hope to theterrorists. “Iraqis love us… and we are winning.” “The media iscurrently on a anti-American rampage… Insurgents love the U.S. media.”Darrell Ankarls of 570 KLIF AM radio boomed from the stage that“Cindy’s stuff is making into the sandbox” and it is “getting our boyskilled.” Cindy should “shut up” and “go home!”

I had heardthat military recruiters were going to be on hand to sign up the youthwho attended the rally. I did over hear two young women excitedlytalking about having just “jumped in, and sign up.” However, it turnedout that they were talking about having signed up for the University ofTexas Young Republican Club. It was announced that a woman ridingaround the parameter of the rally on a beautiful horse was the motherof a teenager who was waiting to enter the military.

FreeRepublic and the their right-wing youth group of “ironic” ProtestWarriors were repeatedly thanked for their support and participation inthe rally. The Protest Warriors are young people who usually appear atanti-war related activities with slogans based on “right-wing irony,”such as “War Has Never Solved Anything (except for everything).”However, in a odd turn of events, and despite repeated pleadings that“we are on your side, we are on the right,” the rally turned on thesekids. Shouting “Cindy Go Home!” a small mob gathered around the threeor four Protest Warriors, attacked their oversized signs, and beganstomping on the signs.

Visibly shaken, the Protest Warriorsbeat a retreat from the rally to the chants of “Get Out of Here Liars!”Over and over again, “We are on your side” were meet by “Liars!” Oneman clarified that even if they were trying to support the war, theywere confusing people, and that “it is the devil who wanted to sewconfusion.” It is safe to say that irony, or any opinions that hintedat “shades of gray” were not welcome in Bush Country.

Now that you know the premise, watch the video (IndyBay.org):

Click here to view (windows media)

(And here is a link to some still photos of the pro-war rally)

Crunch time

Normally my progressive friend Andrew Wahl would send me a cartoon that somehow manages to find the lighter side of current events.  But with the stakes so high in Iraq, Andrew felt that this week his cartoon, which will appear in the Wenatchee World newspaper this week, ought remind Americans of what our mission has turned into, and how every American needs to hold the Bush White House and their GOP allies accountable.

(Courtesy of Andrew Wahl, The Wenatchee World, Offthewahl.com)