The Blue State

Video: Stossel smears global warming theorists as socialists

Don't you just love it when someone tells you who you are?  According to John Stossel, people that realize the dangers of global warming and want to do something about it are nothing more than a bunch of socialists.  See how these right-wing scare tactics work?  On Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough and author John Stossel tried to team up on Tyson Slocum, who happened to commit the dastardly sin of disagreeing with Stossel's point of view.  Stossel then had to vent:

Click to watch video clip

STOSSEL: "It's a hatred of capitalism.  A hatred of industrial production.  Yes, it's true, we produce more carbon dioxide.  But we are also the cleanest country in the world.  As we get wealthier, the air gets cleaner.  We can afford to do the things that maybe someday if the globe is warming we have to make adjustments.  It's our wealth that will allow us to save the world.  If we let these socialists control our lives, we'll all be worse off."

I watched John Stossel on the ABC News show "20/20" when I was a youngster during the 1990s.  After that, he seemed to disappear until just about now.  Interesting how whenever he is on television, the GOP is not doing quite well at that particular time.

Deep down though, I really don't think he truly believes that environmentalists are socialists.  Stossel just frames his arguments that way.  Like other economic libertarians, his whole goal is to make the other side seem socialist, while hiding the fact that what he really wants to do is defend his lavish lifestyle.  More power to him.  But the whole "socialist" tactic is so 1990s.  People tried that on Clinton, and it only worked the first few hundred times, then everyone tuned it out.
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Other blogs writing about this issue: Occam's Razor's Edge, Yo Sarrian, EnviroWeb, Bullet Palace, Future Geek, 2 Political Junkies.

Supreme Court whiplashes Executive Branch on tribunals and Geneva Conventions

Today, the Supreme Court applied a major check on the rising Executive Branch power.  The court, which ironically is the most conservative it has been in 20 years, ruled that the Bush Administration cannot hold military tribunals for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba because it gives them few judicial protections:

In a 5-3 decision, the court said the trials were not authorized by anyact of Congress and that their structure and procedures violate theUniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and the four Geneva Conventionssigned in 1949.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the opinion in the case, called Hamdan v. Rumsfeld . Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. recused himself.

Bush, who was meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister, commented on it:

Bush said he would consult with Congress to seek "a way forward"after the ruling, which reversed the appeals court ruling on statutorygrounds, avoiding major constitutional issues.

...Bush added, "I want tofind a way forward. In other words, I have told the people that I wouldlike for there to be a way to return people from Guantanamo to theirhome countries. But some people need to be tried in our courts, and theHamdan decision was the way forward for that part of my statement."

Bush is going to consult Congress for a way forward?  Wow!  That's pretty rare for this President.  Overall, this ruling did do a few things.  First, it affirmed the position that the Administration needs to follow the Geneva Conventions -- even though some have argued that the Geneva Conventons do not apply during this war (even though they were obviously written specifically for wars like this!).

Secondly, it affirms the longstanding American belief that we are a nation of laws, not just merely a nation of men.

I thought that the funniest part about the ruling was the fact that it overturned a ruling that John Roberts had issued in a lower court, which sided with the government on this case.  Therefore, once Roberts reached the Supreme Court, he had to be recused from hearing this case a second time.  Although, even if he had voted with the government a second time, his side still would have lost by one vote.
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Other blogs writing about this issue: Alternate Brain, Blackhacker, The Doc is in, Dan's Blog, Ktemic Konsiders, End of the World, Spider Web, The Xsociate Files, The Bush Whacked League, Adventures in Perpetuity, Arcadia Est Imperare Orbi Universo, Field and Song, The Broad View, Laura Elizabeth, Slant Blog.

Video: Gore responds to critics

As a guest on the Daily Show, former vice president Al Gore was asked by host Jon Stewart about the small number of self-proclaimed "scientists" that are attacking him and his cause:

Click to watch video clip

STEWART: What about the scientists behind it?  There's some guys who say it -- are they typically obviously associated with fossil fuels, and that sort of thing?

GORE: Well, the scientific debate really is over on the principle points about this.  There are a few people who -- and some of them do get money from coal companies and oil companies.  But the essential debate is completely over.  That's why I wish President Bush would see the movie (audience laughter).  I wish that his Administration would see the movie.  He has people advising him.

STEWART: If you'd like, I'll put in a call.

GORE: That might help.  But he said yesterday it's a problem, but it's not clear that people have anything to do with causing the problems -- so let's just get past that debate.  Well, if you go to the doctor, the doctor doesn't say, "Well, let's don't worry about what's causing all these problems you're having.  We don't need to know that.  Let's, you know, give you an Aspirin and send you home."  It's a very similar proposition.

Al Gore is not running for president.  He will not be seeking any other political office.  What could possibly be his motivation other than the fact that he is passionate about this issue?  He has been giving this slide show for years.  He was inspired by those that taught him.  Is it a bad thing to want to be an activist?  Apparently some of his critics think so.
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Other blogs writing about this issue: Orange Penny Loafers, Blah Blah Blog, The S Factor, Now you Know, Spare Change, A Tableau of Crimes and Misfortunes, The Obfuscation Report, The last Ditch, Innovation Science.

Court victory for gas station owner fighting Shell

Now this is the definition of populist activism.  A man by the name of Mehdi Shahbazi owns a Shell gas station in Marina, California.  The problem?  Ever since the oil companies gouged Americans following hurricane Katrina, he has been handing out fliers to his customers telling them never to get gasoline from big oil companies.  Shell learned of this, and immediately shut down the pumps at his station.  After erecting an anti-big oil sign, Shell tried to evict him.  So the two sides went to court over it.

Yesterday he won a huge victory at a federal court in San Jose:

U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel earlier this month denied ShellOil's request for a preliminary injunction aimed at forcing Shahbazi toleave his station on Del Monte Boulevard.

The ruling means that the bizarre, nationally publicized siege atMarina Shell could continue for months -- perhaps years -- as the caseis litigated.

At issue is whether Shahbazi, 63, broke his franchise agreement topromote the product last fall when he passed out fliers and erected twolarge signs outside his station attacking Big Oil -- and advocated aboycott of all stations owned by oil companies.

Although he can no longer sell gas -- Shell has cut off his fuelsupplies -- Shahbazi is still operating his mini-mart and car wash, andsympathetic customers patronize the station to support him.

``I'm going to continue keeping the station open as many hours as Ican. I will keep fighting until I die,'' Shahbazi said Wednesday. ``Iwasn't surprised at the decision. Judge Fogel is a very fair judge.''

Colin West, a San Francisco attorney who is representing Shell inthe case, said he also wasn't surprised because ``preliminaryinjunctions are very hard to get.'' But he expressed confidence thatShell would win the case on the merits when it comes to trial.

Since November, the pumps at Shahbazi's station have been surroundedby chain-link fences, installed as part of an environmental upgradeproject. Shell refused to take them down after the work was finished.

(full article here)

This man has lost more than $1 million worth of real estate because of his passion for this issue:

Shahbazi is also going broke because of a long-running battle withShell Oil. He just lost his $1 million Carmel condo. The pumps at hisbeloved gas station in Marina have been fenced off. The beer cooler inhis mini-mart is empty because he can't pay suppliers. He's living inhis minivan.

Well good luck to this guy.  If any of you are ever down in Marina, California, pay this true American a visit.  Here is the address of the Shell station:

3030 Del Monte Blvd
Marina, CA 93933-3803
(831) 384-8471

And here is a map for how to get there.  Show Shahbazi some support.  He needs it -- the man has the weight of a multi-billion dollar oil company on his shoulders.

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Other blogs writing about this issue: Cool Blue, OSNN Forum, A Day in Norman's Shoes.

More GOP pandering: no more gun safety locks

Barring a terrorist attack or an offensive against Iran, many would agree that the only thing standing in the way of a Democratic Congressional landslide this November are guns and religion.  Judging from the month of June alone, gay marriage and flag burning had almost no effect as far as rallying the conservative base.  Even though the estate tax repeal is still up in the air, Republicans need something else to jump-start their usual voters.  Expect the GOP to very quickly intensify their pandering on gun safety and church and state related issues.

Late on Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives launched the opening phase of a sustained effort between now and November to dismantle current gun safety laws -- which they think will help win their party more votes this November:

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to overturn arecently enacted law requiring safety trigger locks on all hand gunssold in the United States.

The Republican-controlled House handed a victory to opponents of gun control by a vote of 230-191.

...Last fall, President George W. Bush signedlegislation giving gun makers broad protections from civil lawsuits,but that law contained the mandatory trigger lock provision.

Aside from the strategy aspect of this bill, many wonder about the impact that this will have on the safety of our children nationwide.  Groups such as Project Child Safe, which has helped distribute 35 million gun safety kits nationwide, will have to work extra hard to encourage more Americans to get safety locks for their guns.

Personally speaking, the action by the Republican House last night demonstrated how radically conservative that body of representatives really is.  Even President Bush, a gun rights advocate, supports gun safety locks.  This attitude of dangerous indifference towards local communities all across the country says a lot about Republican priorities.  Substantively speaking, yesterday's bill about safety locks had absolutely nothing to do with the ongoing debate about the right to own a gun.  Instead, at stake was the right of innocent, well-intending American families to walk freely in public without the fear of someone accidentally dropping or mishandling a firearm nearby without a safety lock.  Of course, anyone even questioning this bill about safety locks would be labeled as opponents of gun rights.  So much for an honest, substantive debate beforehand -- not that I ever expected one from the GOP majority in an election year.

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Other blogs writing about this issue: Explore for Truth, No Way Home, Americablog.

Video: Colbert corners Matthews on Iraq

Many conservatives who watch the Colbert Report each night have no idea that he is actually making fun of them.  During the Tuesday night show, he tried to back guest Chris Matthews into a rhetorical corner on the issue of Iraq, using the typical right-wing tactic of turning any criticism of U.S. policy into a criticism of the U.S. itself:

Click to watch video clip

--------- Partial Transcript --------

COLBERT: "You never supported the war.  Why?  Everyone else did.  Even the Democrats did."

MATTHEWS: "I thought it would end up creating more terrorism than when we started."

COLBERT: "Boy, you got egg on your face now."

MATTHEWS: "I know.  Yeah, you got me.  This has turned out to be a real winner."

COLBERT: "Well, listen.  We're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here, right?"

MATTHEWS: "Oh, that's how it works?  There's just a limited number of them?"

COLBERT: "Do you not listen to the President?  That's what he says."

MATTHEWS: "You know, people aren't born terrorist -- they become terrorist."

COLBERT: "Mhmm.  So wait a second.  Are you blaming terrorism on the United States?"

MATTHEWS: "No, I'm saying people --"

COLBERT: "You say we made terrorists."

MATTHEWS: "No I didn't.  I said --"

COLBERT: "Oh come on Chris.  Put it together."

That rhetorical tactic worked very well against Max Cleland in 2002 and against John Kerry in 2004.  But now that a majority of the country is against this war, the tactic of labeling people as disloyal to the United States is a losing political strategy.
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Other blogs writing about this issue: A Philistine on the Sidewalk, Craker Thoughts, Inside Zebster, These are Hard Times for Dreamers.

SC Justice Kennedy accuses DeLay of playing politics with race

A huge Supreme Court ruling came down today -- disappointing for the most part.  By a vote of 5 to 4, they upheld a lower court ruling that Tom DeLay's 2003 redistricting plan was legal.  Essentially, it opens the door for both party's to consistently change district lines to give them a leg up heading into each November election.

Congressional Quarterly explains:

The court rebuffed Democratic arguments that the remap adopted in2003 was an unconstitutional mid-decade partisan gerrymander. In sodoing, it left open the possibility that other state legislatures mightchoose to redistrict more than once a decade if party control shifts.

In 2002, under a court-drawn map, Democrats won 17 of Texas’ 32 U.S.House seats. But Republicans captured control of the state legislaturethat year, and at the instigation of former U.S. House Majority LeaderTom DeLay, R-Texas, they pushed through a new redistricting plan in2003.

Underthe new map, Republicans won 21 of the 32 House seats in the 2004election, which enabled the GOP to increase its overall House majority.

However (and this is rather interesting), conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy hinted that Tom DeLay's effort in Texas used the race card to divide the Hispanic vote, preventing them from electing a Hispanic Congressman in San Antonio:

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for a 5-4 majority, saidHispanics do not have a chance to elect a candidate of their choosingin south and west Texas under the state's plan.

The plan's "troubling blend of politics and race — and the resultingvote dilution of a group that was beginning to achieve (the federallaw's) goal of overcoming prior electoral discrimination — cannot besustained," Kennedy wrote.

The Dallas Morning News predicts that this ruling could scrutinize Republican Congressman Henry Bonilla, who narrowly won because of Tom DeLay's gerrymandering of the San Antonio district.

Other than that, though, this is a major victory for Republican majorities in the southern U.S., who now can legally redraw the district maps as they please.  As the Houston Chronicle said a few days ago before the decision was handed down, this ruling would hold nationwide implications.

Sadly, when you draw district lines based on political advantage and not on simple geography, you are pretty much throwing a punch to the gut of representative democracy.

You can read the official ruling here.

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Other blogs writing about this issue: The Carpetbagger Report, Majikthise, Democratic National Committee, The it List, Down with Tyranny, Jab, Victoria Kos, It's my Right to be Left of Center, Supreme Irony, D-Day, The Daily Jot, Unique like Everybody, BiblioSquirrel, Brains and Eggs, Truth Dig, Moonage Political Webdream, MyDD.

Cartoon: It's getting hot in here

(By Andrew Wahl, OffTheWahl.com, The Wenatchee World)

Here is Andrew's weekly commentary:

My latesttoon, “A Little Help Here?” [Archive No. 0621], seemed appropriategiven the record heat we’re experiencing here in Washington state thisweek. The toon is a reaction to a recent report by the National Academyof Sciences that found “recent warmth is unprecedented for at least thelast 400 years and potentially the last several millennia” and that“human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.”
    You can check out the entire report here:

http://fermat.nap.edu/catalog/11676.html#toc

    That’s it for this week. Back next week with my annual Fourth of July happy toon.

Till then,
Andrew
toon@offthewahl.com

No matter what, the evidence published in this report will not be enough for some conservatives to be convinced.  Nonetheless, great cartoon Andrew.
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Other blogs writing about this issue: Words of Power, Sausy Blue, Get the Facts and Get Involved, Issues in Science and Technology, Bad Politics, What Happened to my Country?, Real Alert, African American Environmentalist Association, Brewtown Politico, WNY Progress Report, Gristmill, The Worsted Witch.

Video: Helen Thomas on Daily Show with Jon Stewart

On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviewed famous White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who has been attending White House press conferences ever since 1961 -- that's nine presidents in total!  The two discussed Bush's foreign policy doctrine, the lack of reporting after 9/11, and her recent confrontation with Tony Snow:

Click to watch video clip

---------- Partial Transcript ---------

STEWART: You're in a press conference I guess just this week.  He (Tony Snow) said, "Helen, you're heckling me." He said, "It's rude, I'm the teacher" -- I believe is how he put it.

THOMAS: I said, "You're a Johny-come-lately," basically.

STEWART: Did you really?  Very nice.

THOMAS: Now, I asked him if we were going to have permanent bases in Iraq.  And at first...he said no, we weren't going to.  And I decided to revisit the question in the afternoon briefing because I was sure he was off base.  I asked him again.  I said, "Would you like to reconfirm, and I want to revisit this question: are we going to have permanent bases in Iraq?"  He said, "It depends on what you mean by permanent."

STEWART: How do you not --

THOMAS: I don't.

STEWART: It must be difficult not to throw something.

Conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter have attacked Helen Thomas a lot ever since 9/11 for asking the tough questions.  But she has done this for every president -- all nine of them that she has covered.  Regardless of what some say about her, she is definitely one of the greatest journalists of our time.
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Other blogs writing about this issue: My Mad Existence, Shentou, Simply Appalling, Religious Grounds, Jay Melee.

Frist is getting desperate

Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist was hoping to end his last term as a U.S. Senator in a way that would put him in the best position possible to run for president in 2008.  His agenda included immigration, gay marriage, flag burning and the estate tax.  As of this moment, he is 0 for 3 -- following yesterday's defeat of a constitutional amendment against flag burning, which failed by one vote.

With the estate tax repeal the only thing left on his agenda, Frist knows that he had better get this one through.  The vote was supposed to take place yesterday, until Senate Majority Leader Frist realized that he did not have the necessary votes.  He is now looking for support among some Democrats to get the 60 votes that are needed:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Fristpostponed a vote on a measure to exempt most multimillionairesfrom federal estate taxes after conceding Republicans lack thevotes to pass legislation adopted by the House last week.                

The delay is the third since Frist began his quest to repealor reduce the tax last year and the second time this month hisambitions were thwarted by Democrats who say the government needsthe revenue generated by the tax. The House passed thelegislation 269-156 on June 22 after Frist urged it to act beforethe Independence Day recess next week.

``The Senate will vote on a permanent reduction to thistax,'' Frist said in a statement. ``The vast majority of myDemocratic colleagues have so far refused to address this issue;it's my hope that their constituents will use the upcoming recessto explain the importance of supporting a reasonable andpermanent solution to this unfair tax.''

Actually, their constituents are wondering about the skyrocketing National Debt, which is nothing more than a birth tax on young and unborn Americans.  Repealing this tax on multimillionaires will add $1 trillion to the National Debt over the next ten years.  Maybe we should do our children and our children's children a favor by not adding to it.  Just a thought.

It is still unknown whether Democratic Senators will cave in and support Frist's legislation to repeal the estate tax.  If they do, you can bet that they will be exposed.

Just a side note: Warren Buffet, who announced that he will be donating $30 billion to the Bill Gates charity, said yesterday that a repeal of the estate tax would be offensive to the American tradition of meritocracy.

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Other blogs writing about this: Vox Verax, Jarrett House North, J-Dub!, Paul Krugman Archive.