In what resembles a new, bureaucratic version of the signing statements it’s become famous for, the Bush Administration has quietly slipped a clause into its just released fuel economy rules that declares as unlawful the efforts of California and 17 other states to enact their own stricter mileage requirements.

Its inclusion comes despite assurances to Democratic leaders in congress that the federal rules would remain neutral on state regulations.

Environmentalists expect automakers will begin quoting the new clause immediately in court fights against states seeking cleaner air and the reduction of dangerous greenhouse gasses.

Give me Liberty, or give me Death!

- Patrick Henry

I have not yet begun to fight!

- John Paul Jones

Impeachment is off the table.

- Nancy Pelosi

Bravo to the Judiciary branch for doing what the other two can't or won't do!

Since the U.S. government announced new fuel efficiency standards in March of 2006, environmentalists and 11 states have argued that the standards do not go far enough to combat the harmful emissions that lead to global warming.

Today, the Ninth Court of Appeals gave a victory to environmentalists and a "rebuke" to the Bush administration in ruling that regulators "failed to properly assess the risk of global warming" in part at least for exempting larger SUVs and trucks.

The court decision is a rebuke to the Bush administration and its refusal to make meaningful steps to reduce global warming pollution from our automobiles," said Pat Gallagher, director of environmental law at Sierra Club. "The decision tells the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it can't monkey the numbers when it sets fuel economy standards by ignoring the cost of carbon emissions."

The court’s action invalidates the March 2006 fuel standards for minivans, light trucks and smaller SUV’s.

There are two major classes of falsehoods the U.S. government uses to justify its incursions into the Middle East and occupation of Iraq.

The first is a contrived threat to the U.S., like Saddams's cache of WMD’s or links to Al-Qaeda, desgined to invoke fear and patriotism in mainstream Americans. Though much discussed and long ago debunked in the liberal blogosphere, it's being dusted off and reused for Iran.

The second class of lies is aimed at a different group - the Christian right-wing of America. This catergory of lie says that the U.S. must invade and occupy the Middle East because America's Christian way of life is threatened by "Islamo-Fascists." (Any liberal who objects is fascist too.)

The standard m.o. for this class of lie is to denigrate Islam by equating it with terrorism and to paint a picture that shows Muslims hate America for its Christian beliefs. This 2nd class of lies is designed to rally the Christian right to support war and the Republican party - and is the focus of this diary.

Like the first, it allows them to wreak havoc with impunity.

(title shortened)

According to State Dept. officals, Donald Rumsfeld's anger at losing control of funds to build the new embassy in Baghdad left State with no choice but to turn to Blackwater for its security.

In 2004 the State Department began planning for its new U.S. embassy in Baghdad and Rumsfeld lost a turf war for control of the billions in construction funds. As a result, Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowits decided protecting State was no longer their concern:

A new executive order, signed in January 2004, gave State authority over all but military operations. Rumsfeld’s revenge, at least in the view of many State officials, was to withdraw all but minimal assistance for diplomatic security...

Meetings to negotiate an official memorandum of understanding between State and Defense during the spring of 2004 broke up in shouting matches over issues such as their respective levels of patriotism and whether the military would provide mortuary services for slain diplomats.

I was reading a "news story" yesterday about a meeting between the Defense heads of Britain and the U.S. And it just pissed me off how little there was to the story, beyond recording what the two officials said at a press conference and then playing it back for us in the form of an "article."

Really, why waste the time and money when you could just print the transcripts of the press conference?

I long for the days (did they ever really exist?) when a news story reported facts based on listening, researching and then finally a conclusion of what the facts of the issue are.

I'll show you what I mean:

Private Security Firm Raided by Blackwater in Kabul Now Under Investigation

It's really getting hard to know who the bad guys are anymore.

Two Afghani workers were "taken into custody" and American and Canadian citizens were held "at gunpoint," by contractor Blackwater USA during a raid of a competing private security firm in Kabul last month, an "American security official" with close ties to the company told the AP. "[T]he U.S. official (also) said Blackwater security teams took computers and office files."

A second source, Police Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal told AP that "Afghan police provided security" for the raid on the private firm U.S. Protection and Investigations (USPI).

The AP notes that Blackwater provides security for the U.S. embassy in Kabul and USPI does security work for USAID, an arm of the State Department.

Jeniva Jalal, God rest her soul, is dead.

So is Marany Awanees.

Their crime?

Let's just call it, "DWI."*

The death toll in Myanmar (Burma) may be much higher than its ruling junta has admitted publicly. The US charge d'affaires there, Shari Villarosa, told AFP that "she believed the death toll from last week's crackdown was much higher than the junta has admitted and that thousands of people may have been jailed."

Meanwhile two European newspapers have reported on accounts by exiles and others that the junta has been incarcerating many of those arrested in newly created internment camps.

According to exiles, some 270 monks are believed to be detained at Kyeikkasan, a former racecourse in the north-east of Rangoon (Yangon) that is being used as an internment camp by the authorities.

Also at NION.

This Guy wants to be President?

Check out Newt's interview on Monday's On The Record, with FOX News's Greta Van Susteren and the kind of wild rhetoric Congress buys into when they go along with Republicans in voting to take it to Iran.

After some initial discussion and footage of Ahmadinejad, it doesn't take long for Gingrich to begin blaming the Clinton administration for the current state of affairs in Iran:

GINGRICH: Well, and then Louis Freeh, when he was the director of the FBI, said the Clinton administration actively, consciously didn't want to learn that the Iranians had killed Americans at Khobar Towers because they didn't want to have to confront the fact that what do you do about it.

Freeh has indeed has been critical of the Clinton administration notably in WSJ op-ed piece on June 25, 2006. But Gingrich leaves out that Freeh also cites the Reagan administration for blame and that "the Khobar bombing is just one example of how successive U.S. governments have mishandled Iran."

Remember 2005?

Remember how Bush dismantled Social Security by diverting deductions to private accounts?

Remember how the majority of American people were in favor of not messing with Social Security but that the Democrats, worried that they would be called weak on fiscal responsibility, caved in to Republican demands?

Remember how the Republicans succeeded in taking the money from Social Security - a program that started out of concern from the great market crash of 1929 - and investing it in the stock market beginning in 2006?

"For the second time in three years," California's legislature has voted to legalize same sex marriage. But Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to veto the bill, again.

In 2005 Arnold claimed to be following the people's will when he vetoed a similar measure.

In promising to veto the latest bill, the governor yesterday again cited a statewide referendum that opposed gay marriage back in 2000, despite the fact that attitudes towards gay marriage have changed in the last 7 years.

"It would be wrong for the people to vote for something and for me to then overturn it," Schwarzenegger said. "So they can send this bill down as many times as they want, I won't do it."

But is Arnold always this concerned with the people?

Poor, Slanted Coverage of DC Protests

I took a quick survey of major news pages on the web Saturday night. This was at approximately the same time that kossacks at the DC protests were starting to report back with diaries and pictures of their own. So their was plenty of time to get things up on the net.

The results weren't very satisfying:

• Headlines that made the arrests the story
• Stories that equated the miniscule amount of counter-protestors, with the thousands of anti-war protestors
• Very poor to (no) placement of the protesst story in the top headlines
• Distractions like OJ or a sudden MSM interest in a bus crash in Mexico were splashed on the front pages.

It was almost as if 100,000 or more people hadn't marched on Washington condemning the government over the war and calling for impeachment.

This is a big victory for anyone who is beside themselves over the Bush Administration's contention that the EPA shouldn't regulate Pollution.  That's right, the Environmental Protection Agency shouldn't regulate pollution in BushCo Fantasyland.

A federal court in Vermont awarded a major victory to states who want to regulate auto emissions that produce dangerous greenhouse gases:

Judge William Sessions III of U.S. District Court in Burlington ruled that state action to limit greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles -- standards that originated in California in 2002 and have since been adopted by Vermont and at least 10 other states -- was not preempted by federal rules on vehicle fuel economy.

Six months ago I penned a diary that asserted what to many here was simply un-thinkable, namely that if they didn't take certain steps, The Democrats will Own this War.

Many disagreed:

Bush and Cheney started the war (7+ / 0-)

The GOP in the Senate blocked ...even a debate on the merits of the troop surge/escalation.  ALL of the Democrats in the Senate voted to proceed with a debate on the anti-escalation resolution.

The Democratic Congress may not be as aggressive as we might like...but any notion that the Iraq war is anything but a GOP war is totally ridiculous.

But many agreed it was possible. This person really surprised me:

If they don't put an end to it...they will own it (6+ / 0-)

...

They need to do what they promised they would when they ran in 2006...and they need to pull our troops out by the end of the year. Sure, it's March...I don't believe they "own" it yet...but they WILL if they don't get their acts together.

So where are we now that it's September?

If what we've seen so far is any indication, the 21st century may well mark the emergence of the Corporate Armies. More and more, corporations are involved in all phases of warfare including supplying, arming, funding or contracting out armies for hire. These paid combatants can be used to wage battle against opponents in a civil war, rebel factions, insurgents or even protestors. Anyone deemed by a corporation or it's allies in government as threatening moneyed interests can potentially be targeted.

In Iraq, the US government uses "contractors" to carry out tasks which once fell only to military personnel. These armies-for-hire are often mistrusted and resented by members of the US military, both rank and file and at the top levels of command:

"These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force... They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place."

Brig. Gen. Karl R. Horst, deputy commander of the 3rd Infantry Division (US Army)

But Iraq is not the only instance...

In looking over the news from Iraq this week, I can't help but notice that war yields both "good" news and bad news, depending who you are and what kind of reports you're interested in.

For the many in the corporate set, the news couldn't be better. War means money. And in the greed-is-good culture that Jerome A Paris alluded to in his earlier diary this makes a tidy sum for many companies. Meanwhile the juxtaposition of what's happening on the ground can make you sick (if you happen to have a nagging thing like a conscience.)

Let's take a brief look at 2 sets of current events in Iraq this week.

War is Hell.

And sometimes war is such Hell, that it makes suicide seem like the best option.

Yeah I know: you're ready to stop reading this now. I don't blame you, but if I promise to make it not too gruesome, will you please read along?

UPDATE: Please also see a Related Diary by testvet6778. Thanks.