This Is Good

It's a post from Connecting.The.Dots titled "President Gore, Lame Duck." The only thing from the post with which I disagree is the idea that George W. Bush would be the 2008 GOP nominee -- I think PNAC signatory Jeb Bush would have gotten the nod in this alternate timeline -- but other than that it's right on:

As Al Gore faces his final years in the White House, history will view his two terms as disappointing.

After a razor-thin victory over George Bush in 2000, the new President was ultra-cautious.

Republicans labeled him “Al Bore” for failing to pursue a muscular foreign policy and for endless consultations with UN members, NATO allies, even potential adversaries such as North Korea and Iran.

Then he overreacted to such criticism, using an intelligence report in August, 2001, as pretext for striking defenseless camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, arousing protests throughout the Middle East over the death of a populist leader, Osama bin Laden, and his followers.

Even more controversial was Gore’s expulsion of fifteen visitors from our ally, Saudi Arabia, for what Rush Limbaugh sarcastically termed “the heinous crime of taking flying lessons.”

The furor drove oil prices to $30 a barrel, with public protest bringing the President’s approval ratings down to 50 percent.

After that, Gore reverted to consensus by pushing for UN inspections in Iraq for weapons of mass destruction, which were never found. This diplomatic waffling, critics claim, diminished the U.S.’s standing in the world.

On the domestic front, the President refused to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, despite an ongoing budget surplus, and pushed for crippling limits on industrial emissions to reduce the so-called greenhouse effect.

Despite such gaffes, Gore narrowly won reelection in 2004 by reverting to Bill Clinton’s ploy of “It’s the economy, stupid.” His opponent, Malcolm Forbes, never managed to stir voters with his proposal of a flat income tax.

As 2008 approaches, the blandness of the Gore years may end. Vice-President Joe Lieberman, with a lock on the Democratic nomination, favors an aggressive American stance in the world. He will likely face George W. Bush, who claims Gore's election sent the country into a downward spiral.

A major issue will be terrorism which, relatively quiescent in eight years of diplomatic bumbling, may come to the fore again when a new President has America acting like a superpower again.

The question in 2008 will be: How do we let the rest of the world know we can no longer be pushed around?

Gerald Ford (with Update)

There's some good stuff over at Washington Monthly with regard to Gerald Ford. This is interesting (via the Washington Post):

Former president Gerald R. Ford said in an embargoed interview in July 2004 that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration.

In a four-hour conversation at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo., Ford "very strongly" disagreed with the current president's justifications for invading Iraq and said he would have pushed alternatives, such as sanctions, much more vigorously. In the tape-recorded interview, Ford was critical not only of Bush but also of Vice President Cheney -- Ford's White House chief of staff -- and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's chief of staff and then his Pentagon chief.

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

And this post by Steve Benen addresses the different styles of Bush and Ford, even though many commentators are now "drawing parallels between Ford's presidency and that of George W. Bush." Ford would "force the strong egos that surrounded him to make their case in person during lengthy White House sessions, where he would constantly question the most minute details."

I have a hard time imagining the Idiot Bush doing the same thing.

UPDATE: The virtuous Bill Bennett isn't all that happy with Gerald Ford these days:

Since "decency" seems to be the watchword of the day and the consensus modifier for Jerry Ford (a view with which I generally concur), may I nevertheless be permitted to ask this: just how decent, how courageous, is what Jerry Ford did with Bob Woodward? He slams Bush & Cheney to Woodward in 2004, but asks Woodward not to print the interview until he's dead. If he felt so strongly about his words having a derogatory affect, how about telling Woodward not to run the interview until after Bush & Cheney are out of office? The effect of what Ford did is to protect himself, ensuring he can't be asked by others about his critiques, ensuring that there can be no dialogue. The way Ford does it with Woodward, he doesn't have to defend himself...he simply drops it into Bob Woodward's tape recorder and let's the bomb go off when fully out of range, himself. This is not courage, this is not decent. The manly or more decent options are these: 1. Say it to Bush's or Cheney's face and allow them and us to engage the point while you're around, or 2. Far more decently, say nothing critical of Bush will be on the record until his presidency is over. There's a 3. Don't say anything critical of George Bush to Bob Woodward at all.

You're a former President Mr. Ford, show a little more decency to the incumbent who is in a very, very tough place and trying to do the right thing....you may recall those days and positions yourself.

Although I wish that President Ford would have spoken up publicly in July 2004, I can understand why he decided not to. Kagro X at Daily Kos sums it up this way:

* * * Ford's comments were embargoed precisely because it was already impossible to have an honest dialogue about opposition to the war in this country before he ever made them.

What does it say about the American political climate when a Republican ex-president -- a 90+ year old man, by the way, who hasn't been moving in DC circles for years -- feels intimidated in expressing his views on the biggest and most important issue of the day?

Yes, there's a tradition of ex-presidents holding their tongues. And yes, Bennett is astute enough to recognize that the terms of Ford's embargo are very pointedly not aimed at preserving that tradition. But if that wasn't the point of the embargo, then what was it? Clearly if it wasn't just outright fear, it was at least Ford's anticipation -- and one that's obviously quite correct given this "administration's" track record -- of the headache of harassment and smearing he'd be in for, for daring to express his doubts and opposition. * * *

I have a question -- exactly how many prominent Republicans were openly criticizing Bush's Iraq policy back in July of 2004? I think two of them were, but it might have been as many as three.

It Begins

From The Independent (via Raw Story):

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

It has been officially recorded in a six-year study of the Sunderbans by researchers at Calcutta's Jadavpur University. So remote is the island that the researchers first learned of its submergence, and that of an uninhabited neighbouring island, Suparibhanga, when they saw they had vanished from satellite pictures.

Two-thirds of nearby populated island Ghoramara has also been permanently inundated. Dr Sugata Hazra, director of the university's School of Oceanographic Studies, says "it is only a matter of some years" before it is swallowed up too. Dr Hazra says there are now a dozen "vanishing islands" in India's part of the delta. The area's 400 tigers are also in danger.

Until now the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea were expected to be the first populated ones to disappear, in about eight years' time, but Lohachara has beaten them to the dubious distinction.

Matt Davies

Saparmurat Niyazov

Turkmenistan's President Saparmurat Niyazov, who died yesterday, appears to have been quite the character:

For two decades, Niyazov crushed opposition and pursued an extravagant personality cult, renaming January after himself, April after his mother, and erecting a rotating gold statue of himself in the centre of the capital Ashgabat. * * *

One of the ex-Soviet Union's harshest and also most idiosyncratic leaders, Niyazov tolerated no dissent once he cemented power in an unopposed presidential election in 1990. In 1999 he declared himself president for life.

Watchdog groups accused him of crushing the independent media, rigging elections and committing widespread human rights abuses.

Obsessed with personal power, Niyazov made his presence felt in every corner of the country. His likeness was omnipresent, on billboards, the national currency, and even household items ranging from carpets and vodka bottles to his own brand of perfume.

Aren't Liberal Judges Great!

From the Miami Herald:

A woman did not break the law when she exposed her breasts to protest laws that bar women from publicly going bare breasted, a judge has ruled.

County Judge David B. Beck said Thursday that Elizabeth Book, 44, of Ormond Beach, did not violate disorderly conduct laws.

Book was arrested by Daytona Beach police July 2, 2005, for disrobing in public.

Her attorney, Lawrence G. Walters, said the city is trying to censor his client.

''I've never seen another city or case where the city has shown so much time and effort to shut down one person's First Amendment right of protected speech,'' Walters said. 'They just can't seem to let it go. They need to stop wasting taxpayers' money.''

Beck and the Seventh Judicial Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled in favor of Book for a similar incident. She was first arrested for baring her chest during Bike Week in March 2004.

Deputy City Attorney Marie Hartman said an appeal has been filed for a local court of appeal to reconsider the most recent case.

''We have no problems with her holding up signs, to hold public forums to protest nudity laws, but that does not include the right to go nude,'' Hartman said. ``Any more than you can stand on a podium and snort cocaine to protest cocaine laws.''

There Will Only Be 100 Million Blogs Next Year

From the BBC:

The blogging phenomenon is set to peak in 2007, according to technology predictions by analysts Gartner. The analysts said that during the middle of next year the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million.

The firm has said that 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs.

Gartner has made 10 predictions, including stating that Vista will be the last major release of Windows and PCs will halve in cost by 2010.

Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer said the reason for the levelling off in blogging was due to the fact that most people who would ever start a web blog had already done so.

He said those who loved blogging were committed to keeping it up, while others had become bored and moved on.

"A lot of people have been in and out of this thing," Mr Plummer said.

"Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it."

Last month blog tracking firm Technorati reported that 100,000 new blogs were being created every day, and 1.3 million blog posts were written.

Technorati is tracking more than 57 million blogs, of which it believes around 55% are "active" and updated at least every three months.

You Will Never Find A More Wretched Hive of Scum And Villainy

People are actually living in old Star Wars sets:

I have never been a "Star Wars" aficionado, to tell you the truth. The closest I ever came to appreciating the movie was singing along to the "Star Wars" ring tone on my colleague's cell phone.

That is, until I took a trip to the planet Tatooine itself — a real place in the middle of the north African desert, a well-kept secret of Tunisia.

While ruthless Hollywood knocks over the set of each movie as soon as the director shouts his final "Cut!," Tunisia, where George Lucas shot most of the "Star Wars" scenes, still keeps the original set from the '70s, protecting it from the burning sun and the evil winds of the Sahara. * * *

Frat Boys Win Lawsuit Against "Borat" . . . Not!

JB, it looks like you might be able to see "Borat" on DVD after all (from Reuters):

As the esteemed Kazakh television journalist Borat Sagdiyev might say: "High Five. Sexy Time. You Lose."

Two college fraternity buddies shown guzzling alcohol and making racist remarks in the "Borat" movie have lost their bid for a court order to cut the scene they claim has tarnished their reputations, court papers revealed on Monday.

The students sued the movie's distributor and producers last month, saying filmmakers had duped them into appearing in "Borat" by getting them drunk and falsely promising the film would never be shown in the United States.

At the time the suit was filed, a judge denied the pair's request for a temporary restraining order that would remove footage of them from the film, but the plaintiffs were given a another chance to seek an injunction at a hearing last week.

The South Carolina college students lost again when Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Joseph Biderman ruled they had failed to show a reasonable probability of success on the merits of their case or that money damages alone would be insufficient to resolve their claims.

Arguments on the latest motion focused mainly on the future DVD release of the hit movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association gave Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Borat, the award for Best Actor (Forest Whitaker shared that particular award with Baron Cohen).

Toles