Jason Hancock of the Iowa Independent has an investigative report about the American Future Fund which should be of interest to anyone disgusted by the Willie Horton and SBVT Liars brand of slurs which were tossed about in past elections.

In fact, 2 of the principals in the group are directly tied to and responsible for that trash.

The Washington Post reported in March - and [Tim] Albrecht [AFF communications director] confirmed to Iowa Independent -- that Ben Ginsberg, of the high-powered D.C. law firm Patton Boggs, is the group's legal counsel. Ginsberg resigned as chief outside counsel to the Bush-Cheney campaign in August 2004 when it was revealed that he was also providing advice to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that sponsored error-laden attacks on the military service record of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

Larry McCarthy, president of D.C.-based media firm McCarthy Marcus Hennings, is AFF's media strategist. In 1988, McCarthy produced the infamous, racially tinged Willie Horton television ad that helped then-Vice President George H.W. Bush bury Michael Dukakis under charges that he was soft on crime.

The organization is currently active in close "congressional races from New York to Louisiana to Minnesota and Colorado. It is one of the most ambitious conservative independent expenditure groups to emerge in 2008. Most observers expect AFF to begin increasing its role in elections around the country, stoking speculation that it will spend heavily to prop up lightly funded Republican campaign committees."

What is of more concern is the manner in which it has been organized with regard to the tax code and FEC reporting requirements.

Because of the way the group is organized under Internal Revenue Service guidelines for nonprofit organizations it does not have to disclose its donors and is not governed by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

A new Pew Research Center Report on their biennial news consumption survey (pdf), conducted in primarily in May 2008, found "four distinct segments in today's news audience: Integrators, who comprise 23% of the public; the less populous Net-Newsers (13%); Traditionalists -- the oldest (median age: 52) and largest news segment (46% of the public); and the Disengaged (14%) who stand out for their low levels of interest in the news and news consumption."

In reviewing the definitions of the various categories, I'd have to say that the blogosphere population probably falls heavily into the Net-Newsers category.

Integrators

Integrators, who get the news from both traditional sources and the internet, are a more engaged, sophisticated and demographically sought-after audience segment than those who mostly rely on traditional news sources. Integrators share some characteristics with a smaller, younger, more internet savvy audience segment.

Like web-oriented news consumers, Integrators are affluent and highly educated. However, they are older, on average, than those who consider the internet their main source of news. Overall, Integrators spend more time with the news on a typical day than do those who rely more on either traditional or internet sources; far more enjoy keeping up with the news a lot than in any other news segment.

Integrators also are heavier consumers of national news -- especially news about politics and Washington -- and are avid sports news consumers. Television is their main news source, but more than a third cite the internet as their primary source of news during the day. This reflects the fact that a relatively large proportion of Integrators log on to the internet from work (45%).

Net-Newsers

Net-Newsers are the youngest of the news user segments (median age: 35). They are affluent and even better educated than the News Integrators: More than eight-in-ten have at least attended college. Net-Newsers not only rely primarily on the internet for news, they are leading the way in using new web features and other technologies. Nearly twice as many regularly watch news clips on the internet as regularly watch nightly network news broadcasts (30% vs. 18%).

This web-oriented news segment, perhaps more than the others, underscores the challenges facing traditional news outlets. Fewer than half (47%) watch television news on a typical day. Twice as many read an online newspaper than a printed newspaper on a typical day (17% vs. 8%), while 10% read both.

However, Net-Newsers do rely on some well known traditional media outlets. They are at least as likely as Integrators and Traditionalists to read magazines such as The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and somewhat more likely to get news from the BBC.

Fully 82% of Net-Newsers get news during the course of the day, far more than the Traditionalists and the Disengaged, and slightly more than the Integrators. Nearly all who get news at this time go online for information (92%). Yet they do tap traditional sources at other times of the day; nearly two-thirds get news late in the evening and of these, more rely on television news than the internet.

Traditionalists

Despite sweeping changes in the news landscape, Traditionalists remain the largest segment of the overall news audience. Compared with the Integrators and Net-Newsers, Traditionalists are downscale economically -- 43% are not employed and 60% have no more than a high school education.

Television dominates as the favored news source among Traditionalists. And at each time of the day -- whether morning, daytime, dinner hour, or late at night -- overwhelming majorities who get news at these times cite television as their main source. Unlike the news Integrators, or those who mostly get news from the web, most Traditionalists say that seeing pictures and video, rather than reading or hearing the facts, gives them the best understanding of events.

Disengaged

Most Americans fall into the three core news audiences -- Integrators, Traditionalists, or Net-Newsers. The fourth group -- the Disengaged -- are very much bystanders when it comes to news consumption. They are less educated on average than even the Traditionalists and exhibit extremely low interest in -- and knowledge of -- current events. Just 55% of the Disengaged get any news on a typical day, and just 20% know that the Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives.

In my household of 4 people, I think we would all fall into the Net-Newsers category. Three of us have configured our browsers configured with iGoogle for newsfeeds. The other one (me) hits the NY Times, Washington Post and the political blogs online first thing every morning. We all listen to NPR in the morning, every morning. One of us also listens to NPR's All Things Considered in the afternoon daily, the others catch it as they can. One sees the local daily newspaper, primarily for the suduko and crossword puzzles but also the local headlines. None of us watch local TV news. All of us watch video clips of news online at least several times a week. Two of us read the weekend/Sunday editions of the New York Times and the local paper, The Connecticut Post. We occasionally watch cable news, MSNBC or CNN, though never the regular network TV broadcasts. We do know that we are atypical news consumers - far more connected and conversant in national and international news than our neighbors, family and friends.

Our news consumption habits place us in a group that is and will be growing. The Pew report notes that "since 2006, the proportion of Americans who say they get news online at least three days a week has increased from 31% to 37%. About as many people now say they go online for news regularly (at least three days a week) as say they regularly watch cable news (39%); substantially more people regularly get news online than regularly watch one of the nightly network news broadcasts (37% vs. 29%)."

Changing their ways

What I wonder is why the cable news and traditional nightly network broadcast news organizations don't make it easier to view and share their news segments online. They've gone to all the trouble and expense to produce them. They have them in digital format. Why not make them available to people who didn't happen to be parked in front of a television at the time they chose to air them? And the ability to both view and share easily may win them more viewers in the long run.

We share video links via IM and email all the time. It makes sense to me that news organizations, both TV-based and print-based, would want to take advantage of the viral marketing opportunity that that kind of sharing makes possible.

[via]

Alright, they weren't called smearmails in his day but Paul Vitello of the NYT reminds us that it was pretty rough back in TJ's day.

When Thomas Jefferson found himself accused of planning to burn all Bibles and legalize prostitution if elected president in 1800, he was ready with a counterpunch that might make today's most vitriolic campaign operatives stop short, if only to gape upon the greatness that once was presidential campaign slander.

Jefferson's rival, President John Adams, was endowed with a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman"; and if re-elected he would crown himself king; and, by the way, he was "mentally deranged."

The author of the attacks was not Jefferson himself, of course, but a master poison-pen pamphleteer named James Callender, who, historians have since determined, was bankrolled completely by Jefferson. (For his efforts, Callender spent nine months in prison under the Sedition Act for saying those things about a sitting president; Jefferson pardoned him immediately after defeating Adams and taking office.)

The acclaimed Billmon has come out of retirement with an excellent post on why the Georgia-Russia situation wasn't discussed more thoroughly in our Congress and our media in the last few years along with an outstanding history lesson. He's tough to excerpt so I'd recommend going and reading the whole thing first and then returning here.

If you read nothing else here or anywhere else, read the Billmon post.

Jerome a Paris pointed out an article by Anatol Lieven who is a professor in the war studies department of King's College London and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation. He covered the Georgian civil wars of the 1990s as a correspondent for the Times (London). He's written an op-ed in the Financial Times that sums the Georgia-Russia debacle quite clearly.

The bloody conflict over South Ossetia will have been good for something at least if it teaches two lessons. The first is that Georgia will never now get South Ossetia and Abkhazia back. The second is for the west: it is not to make promises that it neither can, nor will, fulfil when push comes to shove.

Georgia will not get its separatist provinces back unless Russia collapses as a state, which is unlikely. The populations and leaderships of these regions have repeatedly demonstrated their desire to separate from Georgia; and Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, made it clear again and again that Russia would fight to defend these regions if Georgian forces attacked them. [...]

The latest conflict is humiliating for the US, but it may have saved us from a far more catastrophic future: namely an offer of Nato membership to Georgia and Ukraine provoking conflicts with Russia in which the west would be legally committed to come to these countries' aid - and would yet again fail to do so. There must be no question of this being allowed to happen - above all because the expansion of Nato would make such conflicts much more likely.

Instead, the west should demonstrate to Moscow its real will and ability to defend those east European countries that have already been admitted into Nato, and to which it is therefore legally and morally committed - especially the Baltic states. We should say this and mean it. Under no circumstances should we extend such guarantees to more countries that we do not intend to defend. To do so would be irresponsible, unethical and above all contemptible.

To which Smintheus added this comment in a discussion on billmon's excellent post,

It demonstrated that the US won't allow itself to be dragged by 2nd rate powers into their disputes with Russia. Had the US succeeded in gaining NATO membership for Georgia or given military assistance to Georgia in this war, it would have opened the floodgates. Every dispute between Russia and one of its neighbors would have been turned into a make-or-break test of America's determination to contain Russia. Saakashvili was convinced in advance of this war that he could manipulate the US into the conflict. From an interview the day before he ordered troops into South Ossetia:

[Saakashvili] says he cannot imagine the West not coming to Georgia's aid. It would be like the betrayal of Hungary in 1956 or the then Czechoslovakia in 1968, when the Soviet Union's aggressive repression of restive satellites was met with silence from the West.

If those buttons had worked when he started punching them, then every other regime in Russia's vicinity would have started trying them out as well.

All of which prompts me to ask why we weren't examining the moves towards the ex-Soviet Union countries more carefully in the blogosphere. Yes, there were other things going on, the Iraq War, warrantless surveillance, corruption ala Abramoff et al, dirty tricks in the DOJ, the failure of the Katrina response, but foreign policy that commits us to fight on multiple fronts must always be of importance. Any discussion of NATO membership or other similar mutual aid pacts must be examined much more closely in Congress, in the media and yes, in the blogosphere.

I think Frank Rich earned his NYT salary this week. First, he took a swipe at the 'chicken littles':

AS I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was leading John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election!

Then he was "churlish" enough to point out some actual facts and ended that section by pointing out that the most significant poll was one by the Pew Research Center which found "that only 26 percent feel [they've heard too much] about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him." He then proceeded to set the record straight on McCain in blistering language.

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president's response to Katrina; he fought the "agents of intolerance" of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain's imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

Next he delineated just why each aspect mentioned above is inaccurate. He continued on with an assessment of the media's laziness in covering McCain. I suspect he's thinking of the broadcast media types though he didn't say that specifically. TalkingPointsMemo came in for a great acknowledgment of their coverage of McCain.

While reporters at The Post and The New York Times have been vetting McCain, many others give him a free pass. Their default cliché is to present him as the Old Faithful everyone already knows. They routinely salute his "independence," his "maverick image" and his "renegade reputation" -- as the hackneyed script was reiterated by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column last week. At Talking Points Memo, the essential blog vigilantly pursuing the McCain revelations often ignored elsewhere, Josh Marshall accurately observes that the Republican candidate is "graded on a curve."

Most Americans still don't know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail "McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries' names wrong, forgets things he's said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused." Most Americans still don't know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press's previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

He further illustrated the difference in diligence by discussing the coverage of the potential first ladies and here The Jed Report was used as a source on Cindy McCain's numerous residences.

To appreciate the discrepancy in what we know about McCain and Obama, merely look at the coverage of the potential first ladies. We have heard too much indeed about Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis, her pay raises at the University of Chicago hospital, her statement about being "proud" of her country and the false rumor of a video of her ranting about "whitey." But we still haven't been inside Cindy McCain's tax returns, all her multiple homes or private plane. The Los Angeles Times reported in June that Hensley & Company, the enormous beer distributorship she controls, "lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety," in opposition to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The McCain campaign told The Times that Mrs. McCain's future role in her beer empire won't be revealed before the election.

He noted his conversation about McCain's unreliability with Rita Hauser who's co-founded the Republicans for Obama group and concluded his column with this admonition.

As everyone says, polls are meaningless in the summers of election years. Especially this year, when there's one candidate whose real story has yet to be fully told.

So CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC .... consider yourselves admonished and get on with telling all of McCain's story. I have no hope for Fox ever telling anything like the truth.

And thanks, Frank, for speaking out so clearly.

-- Michael Dobbs deflates the rah-rah mentality in this Washington Post article:  'We Are All Georgians'? Not So Fast.

Actually, the events of the past week in Georgia have little in common with either Hitler's dismemberment of Czechoslovakia on the eve of World War II or Soviet policies in Eastern Europe. They are better understood against the backdrop of the complicated ethnic politics of the Caucasus, a part of the world where historical grudges run deep and oppressed can become oppressors in the bat of an eye.

Unlike most of the armchair generals now posing as experts on the Caucasus, I have actually visited Tskhinvali, a sleepy provincial town in the shadow of the mountains that rise along Russia's southern border. I was there in March 1991, shortly after the city was occupied by Georgian militia units loyal to Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first freely elected leader of Georgia in seven decades. One of Gamsakhurdia's first acts as Georgian president was to cancel the political autonomy that the Stalinist constitution had granted the republic's 90,000-strong Ossetian minority.

After negotiating safe passage with Soviet interior ministry troops who had stationed themselves between the Georgians and the Ossetians, I discovered that the town had been ransacked by Gamsakhurdia's militia. The Georgians had trashed the Ossetian national theater, decapitated the statue of an Ossetian poet and pulled down monuments to Ossetians who had fought with Soviet troops in World War II. The Ossetians were responding in kind, firing on Georgian villages and forcing Georgian residents of Tskhinvali to flee their homes.

It soon became clear to me that the Ossetians viewed Georgians in much the same way that Georgians view Russians: as aggressive bullies bent on taking away their independence. "We are much more worried by Georgian imperialism than Russian imperialism," an Ossetian leader, Gerasim Khugaev, told me. "It is closer to us, and we feel its pressure all the time."

When it comes to apportioning blame for the latest flare-up in the Caucasus, there's plenty to go around. The Russians were clearly itching for a fight, but the behavior of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili has been erratic and provocative. The United States may have stoked the conflict by encouraging Saakashvili to believe that he enjoyed American protection, when the West's ability to impose its will in this part of the world is actually quite limited.

-- Jeffrey Taylor has an excellent background information article on Georgia and Russia in The Atlantic.

Georgia's forty-year-old president, the liberal Mikheil Saakashvili, may possess many admirable attributes--dashing looks, fluency in several languages (including English), a degree from Columbia Law school, and a heartfelt commitment to a Westward-looking future for his country--but strategic acumen, even plain old-fashioned common sense, do not, it is now tragically apparent, figure among them. Rather, Saakashvili is well-known in Georgia for his authoritarian streak and hotheadedness--the most damning character flaws imaginable in a confrontation with the calculating former spymaster and current Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin.

Saakashvili won presidential elections in 2004 promising to impose Tbilisi's writ on the three Russia-backed rebellious republics of Ajaria, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia. In short order, without firing a shot, he reclaimed Ajaria and sent its leader, Aslan Abashidze, fleeing to Moscow. But his reckless decision last week to shell and then invade South Ossetia (populated mostly by ethnic Ossetes holding Russian passports) and attack Russian forces stationed there, combined with his now obviously misplaced faith in the senior Bush administration officials, including President Bush himself, who have been glad-handing him since he came to power following the Rose Revolution of 2003, may yet undo his presidency and return Georgia to Russian vassalage.

The pitiable David-and-Goliath asymmetry of Georgia's dustup with Russia, plus Saakashvili's repeated hyperbolic declarations to satellite news stations, have obscured both the United States' culpability in bringing about the conflict, and the nature of the separatism that caused it in the first place.

There's lots more worth reading in Taylor's article. [via]

-- The BBC reports on what it calls the propaganda war between Georgia and Russia as follows: [via]

The Bush administration appears to be trying to turn a failed military operation by Georgia into a successful diplomatic operation against Russia. It is doing so by presenting the Russian actions as aggression and playing down the Georgian attack into South Ossetia on 7 August, which triggered the Russian operation. Yet the evidence from South Ossetia about that attack indicates that it was extensive and damaging.

The BBC's Sarah Rainsford has reported: "Many Ossetians I met both in Tskhinvali and in the main refugee camp in Russia are furious about what has happened to their city. They are very clear who they blame: Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, who sent troops to re-take control of this breakaway region." [...]

-- Michael Walzer of Dissent magazine makes six points about the Georgian and Russian words and actions. I agree with point #3 which highlights the incompetencies of Bush foreign policy and point #6 about needing a better foreign policy discussion. [via]

-- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates makes it clear that there will be no US military intervention in Georgia. The McClatchy article also points out that Gates was at one time the CIA's top Soviet analyst thus presumably bringing a little bit more to the table in terms of knowledge about the ongoing history of the region.

-- There's a second McClatchy article on the impact of Gates' no intervention statement along with more on the ground reporting of conditions, that's worth taking the time to read. They also cover in an earlier article, the Bush administration assertions that they tried to restrain Saakashvili along with noting that those messages may have been very mixed.

Steve Clemons of the Washington Note invited Dmitri Simes, president of The Nixon Center, to do a guest post. Mr. Simes' credentials are impressive and the post he wrote offered both background and questions that are not being seen in the traditional media which is totally focused on the "Russia is the aggressor" theme.

It is remarkable, but probably inevitable, that so many in Washington have reacted with surprise and outrage to Russia's response to President Mikheil Saakashvili's attempt to reestablish Georgian control over South Ossetia by force.

Some of the angriest statements come from those inside and outside the Bush administration who contributed, I assume unwittingly, to making this crisis happen. And like post-WMD justifications for the invasion of Iraq, the people demanding the toughest action against Russia are focused on Russia's lack of democracy and heavy-handed conduct, particularly in its own neighborhood, and away from how the confrontation actually unfolded. Likewise, just as in the case of Saddam Hussein, these same people accuse anyone who points out that things are not exactly black and white, and that the U.S. government may have its own share of responsibility for the crisis, of siding with aggressive tyrants - in this case, in the Kremlin. [...]

The Kremlin made abundantly clear that it would view Kosovo's independence without Serbian consent and a U.N. Security Council mandate as a precedent for the two Georgian de facto independent enclaves. Furthermore, while President Saakashvili was making obvious his ambition to reconquer Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Moscow was both publicly and privately warning that Georgia's use of force to reestablish control of the two regions would meet a tough Russian reaction, including, if needed, air strikes against Georgia proper.

So it would be interesting to know what President Saakashvili was thinking when, on Thursday night, after days of relatively low-level shelling around the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali (which both South Ossetians and Georgians blamed on each other), and literally hours after he announced on state-controlled TV the cessation of hostilities, he ordered a full-scale assault on Tskhinvali. And mind you, the assault could only succeed if the Georgian units went right through the battalion of Russian troops serving as international peacekeepers according to agreements signed by Tbilisi itself in the 1990s.

Under the circumstances, the Russian forces had three choices: to surrender, to run away, or to fight. And fight they did - particularly because many of the Russian soldiers were in fact South Ossetians with families and friends in Tskhinvali under Georgian air, tank, and artillery attacks. Saakashvili was reckless to count on proceeding with a blitzkrieg in South Ossetia without a Russian counterattack.

Continued here

Mr. Simes also appeared on the Newshour along with Richard Holbrooke and made some of the same points there in response to Holbrooke's hammering of "the Russians are the aggressors" party line.

It's interesting to keep the points made in both of those events in mind when considering this item reported by the International Herald Tribune on July 15th.

Georgian and U.S. troops started a joint military exercise Tuesday [7-14-2008] amid growing tensions between the ex-Soviet republic and Russia, a Georgian defense ministry official said.

About 1,200 U.S. servicemen and 800 Georgians will train for three weeks at the Vaziani military base near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, ministry spokesman Mindiya Arabuli said. The drills were planned months ago and are not related to recent tensions over two separatist Georgian regions that are backed by Moscow, he said.

Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has courted the United States and sent a large contingent of troops to Iraq. His efforts to move Georgia from under Russia's shadow and into NATO have angered Moscow, which has stepped up support for the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Also Tuesday, the Russian Defense Ministry started a military exercise in the nearby North Caucasus region. Ministry spokesman Yuri Ivanov said the drill had "nothing to do" with the Georgian-U.S. maneuvers.

Georgia claims a string of recent explosions and border skirmishes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are part of a Russian plan to annex the regions, while Russia claims Georgia is gearing up for a mid to take control of the regions by force.

Why were US troops training with Georgian troops in Georgia right outside of? Tblisi five months before a US election? The pro forma denial that the military exercises had nothing to do with the two autonomous provinces rings very hollow.

[Update:  strikeout added to clarify the point.  Did not mean to imply direct relationship between joint exercise scheduling and election schedules.]

There are two possibilities: the Bush foreign policy administration is so incompetent that it didn't realize that such activities would push Saakashvili over the edge into imprudent action against South Ossetia. Or the Bush foreign policy administration did know that the activities would push Saakashvili over the edge and went forward with it because the predictable results would support some other action that they want to take.

So what action would neo-conservatives about to be tossed out of power want to instigate? That is the real question.

Could it have something to do with Cheney's wish to invade Iran before he and Bush leave office? There are some outside the US press who think it may have something to do with what's happened.

From The Asia Times,

Georgia is one of Iran's "near neighbors" and as a result of geographical proximity and important political and geostrategic considerations, the current Russia-Georgia conflict is closely watched by Tehran, itself under threat of military action by the US and or Israel, which may now feel less constrained about attacking Iran in light of Russia's war with Georgia.

So far, Tehran has not adopted an official position, limiting itself to a telephone conference between Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, expressing Iran's desire to see a speedy end of the conflict for the sake of "peace and stability in the region". Tehran's dailies have likewise refrained from in-depth analyses of the crisis and from providing editorial perspectives, and the government-owned media have stayed clear of any coverage that might raise Moscow's objection.

Behind Iran's official silence is a combination of factors. These range from Iran's common cause with Moscow against expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), interpreting this crisis as a major setback for NATO's "eastward expansion" in light of the unabashed pro-West predilections of Tbilisi's government, to Iran's sensitivity to Russia's national security concerns. The latter are heightened by the US's plans to install anti-missile systems in Eastern Europe, not to overlook Iran's concern as not to give the Kremlin any ammunition that could be used against it in Tehran's standoff over its nuclear program.

Representing a serious new rift in US-Russia relations, the conflict in the Caucasus, paralyzing the UN Security Council and igniting Cold War-type rhetoric between the two military superpowers, is simultaneously a major distraction from the Iran nuclear crisis and may even spell doom for the multilateralist "Iran Six" diplomacy. This involves the US, Britain, Russia, France, China and Germany in negotiations over Iran's uranium-enrichment program, which some believed is aimed at making nuclear weapons.

Never mind that we've broken our military and are stretched so thin in trying to support two simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We certainly can't support a third war.

What does Dick Cheney have in mind? Was it his intent to draw attacks on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and Baku-Supsa pipelines thus throwing more uncertainty into the global oil market and increasing profits for the Cheney-Bush families and oil buddies?

Or as some fear, does he want to try out the tactical nuclear weapons we've developed on Iran as per the plan the Pentagon constructed for him? As Scott Ritter has warned, pick the US city you want destroyed. If nuclear weapons are used anywhere in a Muslim state, it is inevitable that the same will be used in retaliation on a US city.

Or do we put this down to incompetence? I'd like to see the traditional media spending a whole lot more time on the motivations behind the Bush administration actions. It would be very enlightening and much more useful than the "Russians are aggressors and rebuilding their empire" line that's currently being pushed.

-- Former Bush administration official Paul Saunders points out "Georgia's Recklessness" in the Washington Post. He notes, in particular, Saakashvili's trampling of democratic principles when it suits him. [via]

-- McCain oversteps, nay, leaps way over the boundary of permissible activity for a presumptive presidential nominee right into conducting foreign policy in lieu of the President of the United States.

-- Mikhail Gorbachev weighs in on the Georgia-Russia conflict and his voice should be heard.

The roots of this tragedy lie in the decision of Georgia's separatist leaders in 1991 to abolish South Ossetian autonomy. Each time successive Georgian leaders tried to impose their will by force - both in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, where the issues of autonomy are similar - it only made the situation worse.

Nevertheless, it was still possible to find a political solution. Clearly, the only way to solve the South Ossetian problem on that basis is through peaceful means. The Georgian leadership flouted this key principle.

-- Some commonsense analysis by Fred Kaplan at Slate:

Regardless of what happens next, it is worth asking what the Bush people were thinking when they egged on Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia's young, Western-educated president, to apply for NATO membership, send 2,000 of his troops to Iraq as a full-fledged U.S. ally, and receive tactical training and weapons from our military. Did they really think Putin would sit by and see another border state (and former province of the Russian empire) slip away to the West? If they thought that Putin might not, what did they plan to do about it, and how firmly did they warn Saakashvili not to get too brash or provoke an outburst?

It's heartbreaking, but even more infuriating, to read so many Georgians quoted in the New York Times--officials, soldiers, and citizens--wondering when the United States is coming to their rescue. It's infuriating because it's clear that Bush did everything to encourage them to believe that he would. When Bush (properly) pushed for Kosovo's independence from Serbia, Putin warned that he would do the same for pro-Russian secessionists elsewhere, by which he could only have meant Georgia's separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin had taken drastic steps in earlier disputes over those regions--for instance, embargoing all trade with Georgia--with an implicit threat that he could inflict far greater punishment. Yet Bush continued to entice Saakashvili with weapons, training, and talk of entry into NATO. Of course the Georgians believed that if they got into a firefight with Russia, the Americans would bail them out.

Bush pressed the other NATO powers to place Georgia's application for membership on the fast track. The Europeans rejected the idea, understanding the geo-strategic implications of pushing NATO's boundaries right up to Russia's border. If the Europeans had let Bush have his way, we would now be obligated by treaty to send troops in Georgia's defense. That is to say, we would now be in a shooting war with the Russians. Those who might oppose entering such a war would be accused of "weakening our credibility" and "destroying the unity of the Western alliance."

This is where the heartless bastard part of the argument comes in: Is Georgia's continued control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia really worth war with Russia? Is its continued independence from Moscow's domination, if it comes to that, worth our going to war? [...]

Regardless of which side started this conflict, and quite apart from its tangled roots (read this and this, for starters), the crisis holds a few clear lessons for the next American president.

First, security commitments are serious things; don't make them unless you have the support, desire, and means to follow through.

Second, Russia is ruled by some nasty people these days, but they are not Hitler or Stalin, and they can't be expected to tolerate direct challenges from their border any more than an American president could from, say, Cuba. (This is not to draw any moral equations, only to point out basic facts.)

Third, the sad truth is that--in part because the Cold War is over, in part because skyrocketing oil prices have engorged the Russians' coffers--we have very little leverage over what the Russians do, at least in what they see as their own security sphere. And our top officials only announce this fact loud and clear when they issue ultimatums that go ignored without consequences.

In the short term, if an independent Georgia is worth saving, the Russians need some assurances--for instance, a pledge that Georgia won't be admitted into NATO or the European Union--in exchange for keeping the country and its elected government intact. (Those who consider this "appeasement" are invited to submit other ideas that don't lead either to Georgia's utter dismantlement or to a major war.)

-- And finally, this one falls in the foolish category: McCain calls the Georgia-Russia conflict the first serious conflict since WWII, apparently forgetting about Korea, Vietnam, the 1st and 2nd Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, not to mention the genocide in Rwanda and Darfur.

Atrios reminds us all that Media Matters had the scoop on Jerome Corsi, Freeper, back in 2004 when they provided us with a selection of his quotes.

• Corsi on Islam: "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion"

• Corsi on Catholicism: "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press"

• Corsi on Muslims: "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together"

• Corsi on "John F*ing Commie Kerry": "After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"

• Corsi on Senator "FAT HOG" Clinton: "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?"

[...]

Corsi is also a frequent participant in FreeRepublic.com's online forums, posting under the pseudonym "jrlc" since 2001. (Click here to read a full set of Corsi's posts; click here to read the post in which "jrlc" admits to being Jerome Corsi.)

On FreeRepublic.com, Corsi has, among other things, said that "ragheads" are "boy buggers"; referred to "John F*ing Kerry"; called Senator Hillary Clinton a "Fat Hog"; referred to her daughter as "Chubby Chelsie" Clinton; referred to Janet Reno as "Janet Rhino"; called Katie Couric "Little Katie Communist"; suggested Kerry was "practicing Judaism"; and expressed the wish that a small plane that had crashed into a building in Los Angeles had instead crashed into the set of NBC'S The West Wing, thereby killing actor Martin Sheen.

Media Matters then provided a whole series of specific examples of Corsi's freeper postings with links. To be honest, it's pretty sickening to view but after skimming it, I really have to question how any legitimate journalist would even contemplate as reliable anything that comes out of Corsi's mouth.

UPDATE:

Ben Smith added this note about Corsi:

... I'll take the opportunity to plug one of my favorite radio shows, and the place I first heard Corsi: Coast to Coast AM. It specializes in alien sitings and abductions, time travel, other paranormal phenomena, as well as regular guest Jerome Corsi's discoveries on the malign plans for the North American Union.

Read Ron Rosenbaum's classic Coast to Coast AM piece for more. The show airs starting at midnight all over the place, and is great, hallucinatory listening for insomniacs.

And then there's the debunking by the Obama campaign itself, summarized by Jonathan Martin:

In an move that is one part genuine pushback and one part message-sending, Obama's campaign has released a 41-page PDF file designed to rebut accusations made in Jerome Corsi's book, "The Obama Nation."

The idea is to aggressively fact-check a book that is now No. 1 on the NYT's best-seller list.  But, as made plain by the title and faux book jacket, the goal is also to demonstrate to fretting Democrats, Republicans plotting attacks and reporters watching it all that they won't be "swift-boated" in the way John Kerry was in 2004 starting with Corsi's book, "Unfit for Command."

To prove this point, they don't stop at merely fact-checking each questionable claim in the book -- they also set out to attack Corsi for his fringe views, discrediting the messenger.

Of course, the lies in "The Obama Nation" almost pale in comparison to the bizarre, conspiratorial views that Jerome Corsi has advocated in his broader work," writes the Obama campaign in what amounts to an introduction, noting the author's fear of a purported North American Union, belief that there was a government coverup of 9/11 and past anti-Catholic comments.  

Don Mikulecky is a complexity scientist. A what? Here's his informal definition:

As a complexity scientist, I see all kinds of intricate interconnections and causal entailments.  (If "causal entailment" is too technical a term try "reason why things happen")  So along comes 2000, and the country falls into an abyss of great depth.  Forget "how did it happen" because it will take eons to work out a story for that.  More risky, but more interesting, from my perspective, is the question "why did it happen".  (Answers to "why?" lead to the identification of causal entailment.)

He applies his skills to analysis of Harold Meyerson's piece in the Washington Post which is interesting reading all on its own.

Don answers his why question this way:

So here is my answer. The reason it happened is so we would get to the point Meyerson is so aptly describing in his article. One superpower, no matter who it is, is not going to stay in the catbird seat for long. That is too far from any balance of all the complex forces acting to move the system toward some form of stability. It is basically an unstable state.  Now, let's see what Meyerson says about it all:

These events did not occur in a vacuum. Just a few weeks previous, global trade talks collapsed because China and India believed the proposed regulations would imperil their farmers. When these Doha Round deliberations began in 2001, it was inconceivable that they would be derailed by non-Western powers. By the summer of 2008, however, China and India had attained so much economic clout that they were perfectly capable of bringing the negotiations to a halt.

Notice anything about that scenario?  like the absence of the dominance of Western powers in the discussion?

It's a thoughtful discussion and one that leads into the premise of Fareed Zakaria's book, The Post-American World, which I recommend on its own as essential and very interesting reading. Fareed opens his book, "This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." But the story of the rise of the rest isn't necessarily the story of the US's decline. Zakaria notes that the US's economic leadership and military superiority isn't just going to disappear. As John Ikenberry's reviewin CFR puts it, "Washington's best strategy, he argues, is to accommodate, rather than resist, these modernizing states, allowing them to become "stakeholders in the new order" in exchange for their strategic cooperation."

I wish Meyerson had followed through in his post as Zakaria did in his book though perhaps, he would need a book to accommodate the length.

Fareed published a lengthy essay based on the book in CFR's Foreign Affairs journal which he summarizes this way:

Despite some eerie parallels between the position of the United States today and that of the British Empire a century ago, there are key differences. Britain's decline was driven by bad economics. The United States, in contrast, has the strength and dynamism to continue shaping the world -- but only if it can overcome its political dysfunction and reorient U.S. policy for a world defined by the rise of other powers.

Also of interest: Zakaria's Newsweek article on 'Obama Abroad'. He delineates Obama's stance from a foreign policy perspective and dismisses all the comments of puffery, and smoke and mirrors.

The Eurasia Daily Monitor by the Jamestown Foundation provides translation and a rough summary of news in Asia and in particular, the countries of the former Soviet Union from primary news sources in those countries. It seems that the Georgia-Russia conflict may not be the overwhelming, super-strategic move that some neo-cons have named it.

Pavel Baev summarizes it this way:

Moscow was disconcertingly taken by surprise with the sharp escalation of hostilities in South Ossetia last Friday. The most apparent part of the problem was the lack of leadership, as President Dmitry Medvedev departed to a Volga resort and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went to Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. The greater problem was the serious military and political miscalculations that had resulted in the apparently chaotic emergency decision-making (Kommersant, August 9; Ezhednevny zhurnal, August 8).

It is hard to blame the military for missing the Georgian preparations for the large-scale offensive, since the command of the Armed Forces had been thoroughly reshuffled: The Chief of the General Staff was replaced in early June, his first deputy (the head of the Main Operational Department) was fired in early July and not replaced, and the commander of the Ground Forces was replaced in the first days of August (Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 5).

The main blunder, however, was political, as the Kremlin seriously overestimated its ability to dominate the situation in the conflict zone. The large-scale military exercises conducted across the North Caucasus in July were supposed to demonstrate Russia's superiority in projecting power (Nezavisimaya gazeta, July 18). In parallel, the withdrawal of the railway troops from Abkhazia in early August symbolized Moscow's flexibility and responsiveness to the peace proposals advanced by Germany (Nezavisimaya gazeta, August 8).

Putin was confident that his performance at the NATO Bucharest summit had effectively blocked Georgia's Atlantic aspirations; several stern "warnings" should have ensured that Georgia would not dare make any pro-active move. Surprise was so complete that Putin, according to those who saw him in Beijing, was pale with barely controlled rage, which he tried to convey to U.S. President George Bush and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev (Moscow echo, August 8).

As GrandMoffTexan noted, "there's a very different narrative going on here.  Is it possible that Russia is not, like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, implacable and calculating and trying to send us a message with every tick and grimace?"

The Georgian provocation seems to have had an Ossetian provocation.  Here's an article from the day before the Russians invaded Georgia:  

The latest outbreak of hostilities began on July 31 after two roadside bombs hit a Georgian police Toyota SUV near the Georgian village of Eredvi. Six Georgian policemen were wounded (Interfax, August 1). Russian peacekeepers, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, discovered that the bombs were made out of 122 mm artillery shells (www.mil.ru, August 2). The road leading to Eredvi was built by the Georgians to bypass Ossetian roadblocks near the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali. Last November I traveled that road in a similar Toyota to visit the Georgian-controlled part of South Ossetia. This road has been a thorn in the side of the Ossetian separatists for some time. On July 4 a car with the pro-Georgian leader of South Ossetia Dmitry Sanakoyev, whom the separatists consider a renegade, was hit by a roadside bomb and shot at on the same road in almost the same spot. Three bodyguards were wounded, but Sanakoyev was unhurt. A surge of tension followed the attack (RIA-Novosti, July 4; Kommersant, August 4).

The roadside bomb attack on July 31 was followed the next day by bloody clashes. Both sides accused the other of initiating the fighting. The Ossetians admitted six dead and 15 wounded, many hit by sniper fire. The Georgians admitted nine wounded. Both sides accused the other of using mortar fire. The Ossetians announced that 29 Georgian solders had been killed but did not substantiate the claim (RIA-Novosti, August 4). The Ossetians began an evacuation of women and children to North Ossetia (a Russian autonomous republic), called for volunteers from the North Caucasus to join the fight against Georgia, and threatened to attack Georgian cities and to cleanse the Georgian forces out of South Ossetia. The South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity claimed that Georgians living in South Ossetia were begging to be "liberated" from the forces of the regime in Tbilisi (RIA-Novosti, August 2, 3, and 4).

Kokoity has announced that some 300 volunteers have arrived in South Ossetia to fight the Georgians and that more are coming (www.newsru.com, August 5). Most of the "volunteers" seem to be South Ossetians that were serving in police and other militarized formations in North Ossetia and were sent south as reinforcements. Kokoity has ordered that these "volunteers" be integrated into the South Ossetian Interior Ministry forces (RIA-Novosti, August 6). Yesterday the Ossetians were reporting fierce battles with Georgian forces, while Georgian authorities and Russian peacekeepers reported only shooting incidents in which no one was injured (Interfax, August 6).

The Ossetian authorities have announced the cancellation of a planned meeting with the Georgian side in Tskhinvali on August 7, while the Russian Foreign Ministry said that it believed the meeting had to go ahead (RIA-Novosti, August 6). Russian peacekeepers say that after the initial flare up of fighting on August 1, the situation in South Ossetia has somewhat calmed. The Ossetians insist that it is getting worse (Interfax, August 6). High-ranking Russian officials, including President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, have remained silent about the conflict in South Ossetia.

So how much of this nuance have you gleaned from the American media types?

Not much, I'll bet.

Bookmark the Eurasia Daily Monitor and check its archives for past news summaries.

Greg Djerejian has posted another must-read analysis which takes apart the predictable neo-con, McCain response to the Georgia-Russia conflict.

Witness this incredibly poor reasoning by McCain, jaw-dropping even by the standards of the mammoth policy ineptitude we've become accustomed to during the reign of Bush 43 and his motley crew of national security miscreants. Here is McCain:

Mr. McCain urged NATO to begin discussions on "the deployment of an international peacekeeping force to South Ossetia,'' called on the United Nations to condemn "Russian aggression,'' and said that the secretary of state should travel to Europe "to establish a common Euro-Atlantic position aimed at ending the war and supporting the independence of Georgia.''

And he said the NATO should reconsider its previous decision and set Georgia - which he called "one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion'' -- on the path to becoming a member. "NATO's decision to withhold a membership action plan for Georgia might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia, and I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision,'' he said. [my emphasis]

First, what does it matter in this context that Georgia was "one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion"? If it had been the first to adopt Islam, or Judaism, or Buddhism, would the situation be different? Perhaps this might get assorted Christianists in an excited tizzy or such, which come to think of it, might be why some clueless aide to McCain, fresh from a Google sortie, decided to plug this little factoid into his statement. But what is really mind-boggling here is that McCain would have us double-down, and cheer-lead having NATO "revisit" the decision not to extend membership to Georgia! It is precisely this type of profoundly flawed thinking ... that has gotten Georgia into this bloody mess.

There's more, said in the way Djerejian only can do so along with some references to more authoritative, informed views such as those of George Kennan as well as some recent comments by Henry Kissinger.

Then he produces this bit:

So here is where matters stand. Rather than talk and obsess about what we should do, it is the Russians, sad to say, who will determine the fate of Georgia in the coming days and weeks, and so we might take a moment or two and stop and think about what their next moves are likely to be. Will they stop at Gori (just south of Ossetia) as well as a bit to the east of Abkhazia (a similar 'exclusion zone'), or have they now decided to march into Tbilisi and unseat this Government whole stop (I think it's a closer call which way Russia will go than many of us realize at this hour, but won't hazard to make a call just yet. UPDATE: The latest Russian moves would appear to indicate the former). As a Georgian civilian put it more pithily: "The border is where the Russians say it is. It could be here, or it could be Gori". Or, indeed, it could be Tbilisi, as I say.

Meantime, a Georgian soldier tells a U.S. reporter in the same piece: "Write exactly what I say. Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us." They are, aren't they? They had no business making the cheap promises and representations that were made. No business on practical policy grounds. No business on strategic grounds (though I guess it got Rummy another flag, near the Salvadorans, say, for the Mesopotamian "coalition of the willing"). And now our promises are unraveling and nakedly revealed for the sorry lies and crap policy they are, with the emperor revealed to have no clothes, yet again. This is what our foreign policy mandarins masquerade about as they play policy-making, in their Washington work-stations. It's, yes, worse than a crime, rather a sad, pitiable blunder.

And one McCain would have us compound, I stress, again! An honorable man who served his country well, it is clear his time has past and his grasp on the most basic foreign policy calls we'll need to make in the coming years is very tentative indeed. He'll be surrounded by second-tier 'yes-man' realists and residual neo-con swill, few with any ideas worth pursuing if we mean to take the national interest seriously with sobriety and freshness of perspective. So let us help him exit off-stage gracefully, as he served his country with dignity when called upon, but let us not sacrifice our children's future to ignorants with deludely romantic notions of empire. Been there, done that. Indeed, we have a President who has announced a pre-emptive doctrine which allows us to, willy-nilly, instigate regime change when and where we deem appropriate. Who are we to lecture Putin now? What standing do we have to do so? And what parochial and self-satisfied myopia has us indignantly thinking we are some unimpeachable arbitrer of right and wrong in the international system after the disastrous missteps of the past eight sordid years?

If we mean to help the Georgians escape an even worse fate, we must summon up the intelligence and humility to have a dialogue with Putin, Medvedev, Sergie Lavrov, Vitaly Churkin and the rest of them based on straight talk (not of the McCain variety, and if we can somehow find a messenger of the stature and talent to deliver the message in the right way, hard these days), to wit: we screwed up overly propping this guy up and he got too big for his britches, we understand, but for the sake of going forward strategic cooperation (and don't mention Iran here, at least not as the first example)--as well as stopping further civilian loss of life--agree to work with us in good faith towards a status quo ante as much as possible, don't enter Tbilisi, and throw show-boats Sarkozy/Kouchner a bone with some possible talk of a going forward EU peacekeeping role (if non-binding, for the time being). This is roughly what we should be saying/doing now, not having the President step up to the White House mike fresh back from the sand volleyball courts of Beijing to gravely declare Russia's actions are "unacceptable in the 21st century." Such talk will get us nowhere, instead, it might just fan the flames more (as will Cheney's threats of "serious consequences", apparently a favorite sound-bite of his, but this time mentioned only in the context of the U.S.-Russian relationship). Let us be clear: these men's credibility is a sad joke, and Putin knows it only too well. So let's get real. Before it's too late, and more facts are created on the ground, mostly on the backs of innocent civilians throughout Georgia's various regions.

Amen.

Fairbanks Alaska Republican Mayor Jim Whitaker endorses Obama as does former Republican Sen. Jim Leach of Iowa who is heading up Republicans for Obama.

"My goal is to let Republicans have a clear understanding that their right to vote should not be restricted by any party affiliation," the borough mayor said. He said the economic and political challenges facing the state and country are broader than political parties alone can address and suggested Republicans should consider crossing party lines by focusing on the strongest candidate this year.

Whitaker, a former state lawmaker, said a comparison of Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain leads him to believe Obama has the stronger "intellectual capacity" and a greater ability to manifest it.

Whitaker, who as a politician has often focused on energy issues, said he sensed an open-minded approach in Obama's campaign toward traditional, alternative and renewable energy issues that can benefit resource-rich Alaska.

H/T to Hope Reborn

Via TPMElectionCentral, Sen. Leach who is a moderate Republican with considerable foreign policy experience spoke on the Obama campaign conference call describing "Obama as the real heir to the internationalist approach of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon."

"In my judgment there's a difference between realism and pseudo-realism," Leach said. "The pseudo-realists believe that we can operate in the world alone, that expanding international law doesn't matter, that things like arms control are false starts."

"You try to work with allies, rather than without them," Leach added. "And that is the kind of realism that I think is common sense to the vast majority of the American people, and that's what Senator Obama is reflecting in so many of his speeches."

A realist is what we need so desperately in the White House. Someone who is able to recognize the pitfalls of the Georgia-Russia situation and set a course that doesn't lead the world into yet another all-out war.

Obama's statement on it yesterday demonstrates that type of leadership. The full statement is below the fold.

UPDATE: And don't forget Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter and head of The Eisenhower Foundation. She was interviewed recently by the Washington Independent which followed her endorsement of Obama in Feb. 2008, published by the Washington Post.

Via LithiumCola, It seems that Bush has decided to that agency officials have enough knowledge to replace scientists in evaluating impact of actions on species. Per the AP:

Under current law, federal agencies must consult with experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine whether a project is likely to jeopardize any endangered species or to damage habitat, even if no harm seems likely. This initial review usually results in accommodations that better protect the 1,353 animals and plants in the U.S. listed as threatened or endangered and determines whether a more formal analysis is warranted.

The Interior Department said such consultations are no longer necessary because federal agencies have developed expertise to review their own construction and development projects, according to the 30-page draft obtained by the AP.

"We believe federal action agencies will err on the side of caution in making these determinations," the proposal said.

Right. And I own a bridge in Brooklyn.

There's more good detail in LithiumCola's post as well as in another post by Patriot News Daily Clearinghouse which has more analysis:

Bush's proposed rules would allow federal agencies to determine for themselves "whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants." This means any project a federal agency would fund, build or authorize (e.g., federal agency approval or permits needed) would no longer have independent, scientific review.

Under existing law, mandatory and independent reviews have been conducted by government scientists for the past 35 years. Under current law, federal agencies must consult with the Fish & Wildlife Service or the National Marine Fisheries Service which must determine whether a proposed project is "likely" to jeopardize any endangered species even if no harm appears likely. This initial review enables experts to require accommodations or mitigation measures that provide protection to the threatened or endangered species and determines whether more extensive analysis is needed. A federal government handbook from 1998 concluded that consultations are "some of the most valuable and powerful tools to conserve listed species."

To get some idea of impact, government wildlife experts currently conduct "tens of thousands of such reviews each year:"

Between 1998 and 2002, the Fish and Wildlife Service conducted 300,000 consultations. The National Marine Fisheries Service, which evaluates projects affecting marine species, conducts about 1,300 reviews each year.

[...]

Bush knows that the new ESA proposed rule will be litigated and will likely be overturned by the courts. In 2003, Bush issued similar rules to allow agencies to approve new pesticides and projects to reduce wildfire risks without the pesky inconvenience of needing to obtain consultation from government scientists on whether threatened or endangered species or habitats may be affected by the project. The pesticide rule was rejected by the court and the wildfire prevention rule is currently being litigated.

In the pesticide case, the federal district judge concluded that "to ignore the wildlife agencies is to ignore the law." The judge was also concerned that the pesticide rule was drafted with a "total lack" of "scientific justification" and that there were "disturbing indications" that the Bush administration "deliberately muted dissent from government scientists." This new Bush rule to kill ESA similarly was drafted by attorneys without any input from government scientists, who were first briefed on the new rule last week.

So the Bush administration attempts another backdoor strike at our natural resources on behalf of their business cronies who complain that evaluating impact slows down their projects. Per the Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse post, what's most important to note is how quickly the administrative rule change could be put into place.

The new rules will be formally proposed in the near future. If Bush abides by the usual regulatory rule-making process, then the federal government must publish the proposed rule in the Federal Register to enable the public to read and review the proposed rule.  The public then has 30 days to submit comments on the proposed rule, and the government must consider and provide responses to the public comments.  

The proposed rule could be accepted by the Interior Department as a final rule in only 60 days. This means a final rule could be issued before the November election.

Keep your eyes open for action alerts on responding to this assault on endangered species.

And if you're wondering why it's important, here's another reminder that I saw just yesterday. Basically, the brown snake "all but destroyed bird life on the northern Pacific island of Guam" after its introduction in the 1940s. But what's of interest now is the recognition that the impact of the snake population has changed the way forests grow and may lead to some trees becoming extinct or nearly so which will impact other species.

John Cole did a Sunday morning round up on the situation between Georgia and Russia. It's a good introductory summary including a link to Greg Djerejian at The Belgravia Dispatch who has apparently come out of semi-retirement from his blog to comment on this situation. John also references Daniel Larison at Eunomia. If you want the short version on background, John's post gives you a start.

Greg Djerejian's post is worth reading in its entirety in that it adds some perspective and knowledge that you won't find in the US press coverage. It certainly hasn't been evident in the NPR coverage.

Steve Clemons who also gave Djerejian's post a nod has his own background summary of the Georgia-Russia clash.

Dimitri Simes, President of the Nixon Center, was one of the leading foreign policy experts in Washington to predict some kind of hot clash between the former Soviet state of Georgia and Russia involving the autonomous provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia at the time Kosovo declared its independence. [...]

... Simes convinces me in his important Foreign Affairs essay, "Losing Russia," that much of what we are seeing unfold between Russia and Georgia involves a high quotient of American culpability.

But it's Daniel Larison at Eunomia who's been discussing this intelligently for a long time and continues to do so in these posts. (He also gives Djerejian a nod.)

• Dashed Expectations - 8-10-2008
• Even Fools Are Responsible For What They Do - 8-10-2008
• Anti-Russian Bias - 8-9-2008
• Georgia And Russia - 8-9-2008
• Georgia - 8-8-2008
• Against Saakashvili, Not Georgia - 4-29-2008
• Our Man In Tbilisi - 11-9-2007
• Not What He's Cracked Up To Be - 9-4-2007
• The Suffering Georgian Land - 8-11-2004

He covers McCain's reaction with a nod to John Cole's summary on it in this one: McCain's Georgia Obsession. And in this one: Reflexive Hostility Has Its Advantages.

HIs commentary on traditional news media and columnists' pronouncements and editorials is interesting. I suspect he wouldn't like hearing this but it wouldn't look all that out of place on Daily Kos.

• The Washington Post: More Than One Can Play This Game
• The Wall Street Journal: Overstretched
• The Times (UK) and the NY Post: The March Of The Apologists
• The Guardian: A Not So Cunning Plan
• On Anne Applebaum: So Very Predictable

If you skim through those and their associated links, you'll have the equivalent of a crash course on the history of Georgia, Russian and their satellites.

One more thing to be noted and that is that Randy Scheunemann, McCain's chief policy advisor in this area, is neck-deep in lobbying conflicts of interest. Lindsay Beyerstein at Majikthise has an exclusive scoop on just how deep he is and with what dubious (Chalabi) partners. Given what we now know, the prospectus descriptions of what his organization will do for potential clients just scream 'culture of corruption'. TPMMuckraker expanded on his history in Iraq in "McCain Adviser's Horrifying Iraq Track Record: Will the Press Notice?"