TDF One Week Away

The greatest sporting event in the world gets underway in one week.

No Landis, Basso, or Jan. No wonder the betting websites favor Alexander Vinokourov to win the maillot jaune. Not bad for the Astana squad's top rider. More posts to follow.

"Al Queda" - The new Kleenex

Everything we're shootin' at in Iraq has been deemed to be Al Queda. I thought i had noticed this trend recently in the various news crawls and Wolf Blitzer blatherings. My suspicions were confirmed after reading Glenn Greenwald's column in Salon.

All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

What's even cuter is that the media are picking up the cue. He goes on to provide some recent examples from stellar publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.

It appears the surge of mind speak was started to coincide with the military version. The same thing has been happening with Iran references. I have found from my observations that Iran is being accused of funding shia AND sunni militants in Iraq. My favorite was the claim made by the State Department earlier this month that Iran is funding and arming the Taliban in Afghanistan. So Iran is helping sunni groups whose idealogical bent is to destroy all shia (read Iranian) influence in the region? War truly is peace.

FERC Denies Hydroelectric Farce

Sunday's ABJ reports that Metro Hydroelectric had its request for a permit denied by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This is just another legal slap down that Metro Hydroelectric has experienced in its questionable pursuit of hydro power in the Gorge. I guess FirstEnergy thought that using a "green energy" project as a front would protect them from the future liability associated with removing the dam.

This is not just good news for the Gorge Metropark's monkshood colony but bad news for the ol' Edison dam. There's a legion of grassroots stakeholders (and paddlers) who are hoping to bring down the industrial age relic and uncover a forgotten paradise. The river will thank us for it when we are done.

We (not) the People II

As i had mentioned in a previous post war supporters are still refuting the November election results were a referendum demanding the President to change direction in Iraq. This time I caught Repub' strategist and former Minn. congressman Vin Weber on the Diane Rehm Show throwing out the "this a republic not a parliamentary government" excuse for the president's tone deafness on the war. This makes sense considering that the President has made it clear that he is the decider and ain't nobody outside his administration gonna tell him how to run this war. Except think-tankers, Bill Kristol and the Saudis.

This one talking point is still a refuge for war apologists regardless of the lack of progress the "surge" is showing or the stalemate exhibited by the Iraqi government. And just when you thought things really stink, Turkey is starting to complicate the one successful (until now) aspect of our national experiment in exporting democracy to the Middle East. I'll guess we'll just have to wait until September for something to change.

I will follow up on the Turkey situation in a later post.