Today's Poll Question

How do you feel -- personally and politically -- about hunting?

CAFE au lait

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy laws have sizeable loop-holes that have been happily exploited by auto manufacturers for the past ten years or so. To wit: SUVs considered "light trucks" and thus held to a lower standard than other passenger autos, and truly huge behemoths like the Hummer completely exempt because they qualify, by gross vehicle weight, as a commercial vehicle!
So the good news is that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has drawn up a proposal to reform the CAFE laws. The bad news is that they have decided to split fuel economy requirements for "light trucks" (this means SUVs in addition to the class of vehicles originally intended to be serviced by the current loop-hole: farmers' trucks and delivery vehicles for small businesses) up by vehicle size (square footage, this time, in lieu of gross vehicle weight). This means that the proposal really does nothing to close the loop-hole, but since fuel economy standards will slowly be raised for the whole newly-partitioned light truck category (by 2011, 28.4 MPG for the smallest light trucks and 21.3 for the biggest), this looks like reform.

This article at Forbes has the complete story.

For more on current CAFE laws and loop-holes, and information on the SUV problem in general, I found New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher's High and Mighty: SUVs--the World's Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got that Way quite illuminating.

The Story that Wasn't

As reported in The Washington Post today, Iran does not possess bomb-grade uranium and has not been working to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapons program. These are the findings of a panel of scientists from the US, France, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia who "met in secret during the past nine months to pore over data collected by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency." Perhaps the panel's most pivotal conclusion was that traces of bomb-grade uranium found 2 years ago in Iran came from contaminated equipment purchased from Pakistan and not from an Iran-based nuclear weapons program.

'"The biggest smoking gun that everyone was waving is now eliminated with these conclusions,' said a senior official who discussed the still-confidential findings on the condition of anonymity."

I wonder if we'll accept the findings of the IAEA this time around. We chose to ignore them before the Iraq war and we all know how that turned out.

Prior to this report, "U.S. officials, eager to move the Iran issue to the U.N. Security Council -- which has the authority to impose sanctions -- have begun a new round of briefings for allies designed to convince them that Iran's real intention is to use its energy program as a cover for bomb building. The briefings will focus on the White House's belief that a country with as much oil as Iran would not need an energy program on the scale it is planning, according to two officials."

Do you think this will change our attitude/position towards Iran? More importantly, does our reasoning that Iran must be after nuclear weapons because they have so much oil they wouldn't need nuclear power seem a little thin to anyone else? As the kings of unnecessary over-consumption, big houses, big cars, big everything; we're the last people to be pointing fingers and claiming another country doesn't "need" something because they already have enough. Maybe Iran is simply planning for a time when its oil supply will have run out/be insufficient to meet its energy demands. What a novel concept.

File Under "Too Little, Too Late"?

From NPR:

Progressives are taking a page from conservative politicians and are creating and supporting progressive think tanks, training young activists, and building a progressive network.

Hmmm, weren't conservatives doing this in like... 1950?

Why Bush Cannot Please Cindy Sheehan

I thought this opinion piece from the San Jose Mecury News was topical, given the last two posts here, and quite thought-provoking, as well:

If Bush met Sheehan, platitudes would not suffice. She would want to know why 140,000 U.S. soldiers are stuck in Iraq more than two years after the fall of Baghdad. She would demand answers that go beyond "Freedom is on the march".

The president is not willing to give those frank answers. If he were, here's what he would have to say (translated from Bush-ese)....

The piece is compelling because it is written by an obviously anti-war, liberal chap, but owns up to the fact that US troops cannot just be withdrawn at this point.

"This is George Bush’s Accountability Moment"

[Note: this is cross-posted from craigblog]

Cindy Sheehan speaks for herself:

This is George Bush’s accountability moment. That’s why I’m here. The mainstream media aren’t holding him accountable. Neither is Congress. So I’m not leaving Crawford until he’s held accountable. It’s ironic, given the attacks leveled at me recently, how some in the media are so quick to scrutinize -- and distort -- the words and actions of a grieving mother but not the words and actions of the president of the United States.

I wish I was this gutsy.

Schmoliticians' Poll Question #1

Let me try to articulate an unbiased, reasonably closed-ended question...

Are you personally for or against the U.S. Government withdrawing its combat troops from Iraq over the course of the next 6 months? Why or why not?

[Ed: Please keep your response to 2 sentences.]

Deporting U.K. Hatemongers

In an earlier discussion, Rob brought up some of the potential problems with Tony Blair's call for deporting radical Muslim clerics who preach violence against Brits. Here is an Op Ed piece from the Times written by a Muslim who supports Blair's actions.

al Qaeda Promises More Destruction in UK and US

What do we think of this latest Al Jazeera-aired videotape message from al Qaeda? I don't get freaked out by these sorts of things, usually, but today's announcement from al Qaeda's #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has got me feeling a bit paranoid.

Iraq Bodycount

File under: "Lord help us." From the Web site www.iraqbodycount.org, comes a new report, "A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005." (FYI, the current civilian death toll is up to 26,264.)

"A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005" is the first detailed account of all non-combatants reported killed or wounded during the first two years of the continuing conflict. The report, published by Iraq Body Count in association with Oxford Research Group, is based on comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 media reports published between March 2003 and March 2005.

Findings include:

Who was killed?

• 24,865 civilians were reported killed in the first two years.
• Women and children accounted for almost 20% of all civilian deaths.
• Baghdad alone recorded almost half of all deaths.

When did they die?

• 30% of civilian deaths occurred during the invasion phase before 1 May 2003.
• Post-invasion, the number of civilians killed was almost twice as high in year two (11,351) as in year one (6,215).

Who did the killing?

• US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims.
• Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of civilian victims.
• Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths.
• Killings by anti-occupation forces, crime and unknown agents have shown a steady rise over the entire period.

What was the most lethal weaponry?

• Over half (53%) of all civilian deaths involved explosive devices.
• Air strikes caused most (64%) of the explosives deaths.
• Children were disproportionately affected by all explosive devices but most severely by air strikes and unexploded ordnance (including cluster bomblets).

How many were injured?

• At least 42,500 civilians were reported wounded.
• The invasion phase caused 41% of all reported injuries.
• Explosive weaponry caused a higher ratio of injuries to deaths than small arms.
• The highest wounded-to-death ratio incidents occurred during the invasion phase.

'Hope' is not a fiscal strategy

The fair and balanced A. Barton Hinkle follows last week's Kaine critique with a few choice words for Kilgore in today's RTD: Jerrynomics: Kilgore's Numbers Don't Add Up:

Jerry Kilgore has a different problem. He wants to have things both ways principally in one area: money. As numerous others have pointed out, Kilgore is running as a big-government conservative tax-cutter whose primary fiscal strategy is hope.

Kilgore floats vague platitudes such as "identifying wasteful spending" and "a comprehensive review of state spending, operations, and services", but I've got to think that he could spotlight at least a few specific programs or organizations to cut and trim from the gluttonous bacchanalia of Commonwealth spending - or do we have to buy the cow to get the milk?

R's want to vote for R's who'll cut ineffective spending, but it only takes a village of Kool-Aid drinkers to coronate a primary winner without any details.

And unless we Virginians would prefer the mob-rule democracy employed by our fruitcake brethren from the left coast, can we please drop this talk of referendums? Leaders lead in a crisis, they don’t put it to a vote among the troops in the foxhole.

Unable to calculate a ballpark estimate for the sum total of the Kilgore campaign promises, Schmolitics Senior Policy Analyst and former Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Rod Tidwell simply commented, “Show me the money, Jerry.”

Current TV = Al Gore TV

Current TV is Al Gore's new television venture. OK, Gore's actually an investor in Current TV. But it's more interesting to say it's his. So how good will "Al Gore TV" really be? If it's anywhere as exciting as listening to Al Gore speak, it's doomed. DOOMED, I tell ya...