All About the Benjamins

Conservativism:

Influential former Pentagon official Richard Perle has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan, according to people with knowledge of the matter and documents outlining possible deals.

Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq's Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents.

It would involve a tract called K18, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, according to documents describing the plan. A consortium founded by Turkish company AK Group International is seeking rights to drill there, the documents say. Potential backers include two Turkish companies as well as Kazakhstan, according to individuals involved.

The pursuit of one's happiness.

Irony Is Dead

Where do I even start?

Five authors have sued the parent company of Regnery Publishing, a Washington imprint of conservative books, charging that the company deprives its writers of royalties by selling their books at a steep discount to book clubs and other organizations owned by the same parent company.

Is it that the company is engaging in conservative-approved free market, hyper-capitalist practices? Is it that the authors are resorting to going to the courts? (torts! Get me my smelling salts!!!) Or is it that one of them wrote a book titled "Treachery: How America's Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies"?

I'll let you know as soon as I can stop laughing.

Differences between Progressives and Conservatives

Progressives form their opinions and values based on reality. Conservatives form their reality based on their opinions and values.

The White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents.

Sunshine in America! Because we want it to be that way!

Hating the Govt, Loving the Disease

Conservatives:

Topps Meat Co. on Friday said it was closing its business, six days after it was forced to issue the second-largest beef recall in U.S. history and 67 years after it first opened its doors.

On Sept. 25 Topps began recalling frozen hamburger patties that may have been contaminated with the E. coli bacteria strain O157:H7. The recall eventually ballooned to 21.7 million pounds of ground beef.

Government is the means by which we come together to accomplish that which we cannot achieve by ourselves. It is an acknowledgment that we are all in this together. Only those who cannot see these important ties and lack this empathy would choose to sever them. These people are conservatives and they are psychotic.

Very Stupid People

"Centrist" Democrats:

With President Bush and the Republican Party on the rocks, many Democrats think the 2008 election will be, to borrow a favorite GOP phrase, a cakewalk. Some liberals are so confident about Democratic prospects that they contend the centrism that vaulted Democrats to victory in the 1990s no longer matters.

The temptation to ignore the vital center is nothing new. Every four years, in the heat of the nominating process, liberals and conservatives alike dream of a world in which swing voters don't exist. Some on the left would love to pretend that groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council, the party's leading centrist voice, aren't needed anymore.

But for Democrats, taking the center for granted next year would be a greater mistake than ever before. George W. Bush is handing us Democrats our Hoover moment. Independents, swing voters and even some Republicans who haven't voted our way in more than a decade are willing to hear us out. With an ambitious common-sense agenda, the progressive center has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to win back the White House, expand its margins in Congress and build a political and governing majority that could last a generation.

These people should be driven out of any positions of power and no one should listen to anything they have to say. The idea of appealing to the "center" is inherently flawed. The "center" is so named because it is presumed that it lies in between progressive and conservative positions. This is incorrect for the following reasons:

1. All evidence indicates that the country has become increasingly divided. There is no broad, silent, centrist majority to appeal to. However, since most people like to view themselves in the "center" and not too radical on any issue, using the term reflects an attempt to normalize, aggrandize and over-inflate whatever position one is staking out.
2. The "center" stands for nothing. It stands for a complete and utter vacuum of values, ideas and policies. Instead, the word is used as a stand-in for "things that appeal to a majority of people." This represents a total failure of branding on the part of "centrist" Democrats.

People who vote Democratic do not do so because it is in the "center", but because they are Democrats and identify with progressive values and policies. People who prefer to brand Democrats as "centrists" - which, as discussed above, means nothing and furthermore gives conservatives a foothold in the tug of war - as opposed to Democrats or progressives are morons. Democrats should be pushing progressive ideals, narratives and policies instead of retreating to some fictional center. We win people over by standing for attractive, morally upright and responsibly pragmatic values.

To point, even though Hoover was completely out of touch with the country, FDR did not win because he tacked to some mushy center in between progressives and conservatives, he won because he advocated for progressive things that were wildly popular with people. Social security, the NLRB and consumer and worker protections are all proudly progressive positions and represent America at its best. 70 years later, leaving Iraq, universal healthcare, balancing our budget are all progressive - and markedly unconservative - things that a majority of this country wants. To win, and continue winning, Democrats need to embrace and identify with these popular progressive positions and values.

Progressivism is a healthy and much more viable alternative for this country than conservatism is, and our leaders and spokespeople should be making strong pitches for it, not shying away from it.

LithiumCola, who alerted me to this article, over at dkos has more to add.

E. Coli Conservatives

Government is the problem:

Congressional investigators are expected to tell a House subcommittee today that the Food and Drug Administration's ability to ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply is "minimal" and agency plans to overhaul its inspection regime could make a bad situation worse.

FDA officials, under fire for the recent string of high-profile food scares involving both domestic and imported foods, have been asked to appear before a House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee hearing to discuss the agency's food inspections.

Committee staff reviewed the system extensively and found that a shrinking inspection staff examines less than 1% of all imported food. A typical inspector in the
FDA's San Francisco office examines nearly 1,000 food entries a day -- roughly one every 30 seconds, the committee report found. The agency, it says, allows importers to take possession of their high-risk goods and arrange for testing by a private laboratory. Before melamine-contaminated pet food killed and sickened thousands of pets, the FDA had never inspected those ingredients from China.

Government is not the problem, rather, people who believe government is the problem and act towards emasculating it, otherwise known as conservatives, are the problem. Or, in Grover Norquist's words, "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." Because that worked so well with Katrina.

Private industry cannot be counted on to work for the benefit of the public. Heck, they cannot even be counted on to work for their own paying customers (see Sprint). All they are good for is their own profit.

E. Coli Conservatives

Redux:

Months after dogs and cats started dropping dead of renal failure from melamine-tainted pet food, American consumers are beginning to learn how long and how wide this contaminant has also poisoned the human food supply. Last week, as California officials revealed that at least 45 people are known to have eaten tainted pork, the USDA announced that it would pay farmers millions of dollars to destroy and dispose of thousands of hogs fed “salvaged” pet food. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Through the salvaging practice, melamine-tainted pet food has likely contaminated America’s livestock for as long as it has been killing and sickening America’s pets — as far back as August of 2006, or even earlier. And while it may seem alarmist to suggest without absolute proof that Americans have been eating melamine-tainted pork, chicken and farm-raised fish for the better part of a year, the FDA and USDA seem to be preparing to brace Americans for the worst. In an unusual, Saturday afternoon joint press release, the regulators tasked with protecting the safety of our nation’s food supply go to convoluted lengths to reassure the public that eating melamine-tainted pork is perfectly safe.

Rick Perlstein:

"Attorney Randall Hood of Rock Hill and 15 other attorneys were inspecting a ConAgra foods plant in Slyvaester, Ga., in April when they found the dead rat, bird fathers inside the plant, roaches on raw peanuts and other things 'consistent with salmonella contamination,' according to a court document."

Their con game is coming apart at the seams. The problem is that before it could happen, people had to suffer. Those who don't study... etc.

E. Coli Conservatives

They just do not know when to stop.

Ground beef patties were recalled in five states after at least three children in California were sickened by E.coli. The company that distributed the hamburger patties is blaming the contamination on the slaughterhouse that processed the meat.
The recall was issued Friday for about 100,000 pounds of frozen patties produced by Richwood Meat Co. from April to May 2006 and distributed in California, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

Shove it, Bushie. Some CEO's padded salary is not worth more than the safety and health of our neighbors.