Whiskey Fire: Postal workers who handle letters addressed to Santa at the North Pole say more letters ask for basics — coats, socks and shoes — rather than Barbie dolls, video games and computers. But on Wall Street it's gonna be a very merry, fat bonus Christmas

Empire Burlesque: Spooky Action ay a Distance: Strangulators of Truth Strike Again

Informed Comment: Shocking? Um...no. U.S State Dept. cables released by Wikileaks show that in September of 2008, BP experienced a platform disaster in the Caspian Sea very similar to last summer's Deep Water Horizon explosion

field negro: Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be negroes

OurFuture: Germany's economy shows government "interference" works

BagNews: Broke-Beck Mountains of Madness

A few political blogs have noted John Yoo, the guy who made torture legal for the Bush administration, also has some thoughts about nuclear weapons.

Look at the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. … Could Congress tell President Truman that he couldn’t use a nuclear bomb in Japan, even though Truman thought in good faith he was saving millions of Americans and Japanese lives? … My only point is that the government places those decisions in the President, and if the Congress doesn’t like it they can cut off funds for it or they can impeach him.

Any sane review of Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb in 1945 will show that Truman recognized that plans to use the device were already in motion, and he in fact was very deliberate about consulting with scientists, the military, State Dept, and Congress before making the heavy decision to drop the bomb. Yes, this is a controversial topic, but let's not suggest that Truman made a unilateral decision based on his executive authority to conduct this action. And in fact, one of the first things Truman did after dropping the bomb was to tell Congress that it was up to them to create an Atomic Energy Commission and to take over responsibility for nuclear weapons.

Although the idea of the president hitting the red button to launch a nuclear strike is popular for movies, the significant impact that such a decision would entail ensures make one hope that this is not a unilateral decision, unless Russian nukes are inbound and our government leadership has only minutes to decide whether to retaliate in kind. So I wonder what Professor Yoo thinks about President Ronald Reagan's view on nuclear weapons?

“A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?”

President Reagan in his 1984 State of the Union address.

UPDATE: Good point by bloglogger, Yoo couldn't even get the numbers right. The proposed US invasion force was numbered in the low hundreds of thousands, not to mention the Japanese who would have resisted the landings on Japan. Certainly it was not millions of Americans and Japanese lives at stake.

UPDATE 2: Commenter John Purdue and others are convincing me that the president does in fact have the power to unilaterally pop a nuke. Let me suggest that the ethical thing that the president would do is to consult with his staff and Congressional leaders before unilaterally causing a pre-emptive strike. And I still wonder as to his interpretation of Truman's actions... Thanks commenters for the discussion.

DefenseNews (subscription required) notes this week that the draft Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) had some language about China that some government officials (perhaps in the State Dept) found unnecessarily provocative. Because the United States and China are so "economically intertwined," the decision was to excise the offending material.

Both versions contain this passage: "The United States welcomes a strong, prosperous, and successful China that plays a greater global role."

But the draft version goes on to include the following paragraph, which was stripped from the final QDR: "However, that future is not fixed, and while the United States will seek to maximize positive outcomes and the common benefits that can accrue from cooperation, prudence requires that the United States balance against the possibility that cooperative approaches may fail to prevent disruptive competition and conflict."

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"Over the past ten years, for example, China has fielded more than one thousand short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, advanced attack submarines armed with wake-homing torpedos, increasingly lethal integrated air defense systems, extensive electronic warfare and computer network attack capabilities, and counter-space systems," the draft says.

Later in this week's publication, DefenseNews has a full-page article on China's evolving cyber-warfare capabilities. No doubt that China's serious about developing offensive computer warfare capabilities. I'm a little disappointed (again) with the DOD QDR writers that they could not figure out a way to note these concerns without wimping out because that China's got its hands firmly on our economic purse. We should note where regional superpowers have been working to modernize their capabilities. To keep this in perspective, though, it's still true that China's military investments amount to less than a tenth of ours. In fact, I think we ought to study China's military investments so that we can convince Congress that our overly wasteful and immense defense budget could be trimmed down considerably.

This week's DefenseNews also features a breakout of the DOD FY11 proposed budget, which, at $725 billion, is nearly double what it was in 2001 ($335 billion). As the articles discuss the next-generation fighters and bombers, the new helicopter purchases, the continued cost increases in major defense programs, you just have to ask - if other nations are able to modernize their forces in specific areas that are aimed at adversarial military force weaknesses, why don't we do that? Why continue the reckless spendthrift approach that so characterized the Bush administration?

Oh, I forgot. The Dems are afraid that they'll be called out as "weaklings." That, and the fact that the Republicans continue to stop any legislation from passing through their ridiculous "closure" process. What a great business we're in.

Swing State Project: Well, it didn't take Doug Hoffman long to start bringing the crazy...

My Left Nutmeg: Dodd pursues sweeping financial regulatory changes

Pruning Shears: The long climb back

field negro: Here in Mississippi, we don't need our blacks educated

Pam's House Blend: Pathetically ignorant and perpetually dishonest Republican contributes more battsh*ttery to the public discourse

TPMMuckraker: CREW calls on State Dept. to probe Galbraith over Kurdish oil dealings

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Former Bush State Dept official Philip Zelikow testified today about the closing of Guantanamo Bay. He compared it to the former prison known as Alcatraz, which was closed because of its horrendous reputation. He also feels that the U.S. could easily hold any prisoner from Guantanamo Bay, while Republicans are trying to claim otherwise with their usual fearmongering.

Zelikow: Guantanamo, in world public opinion, had become a toxic problem for the United States of America, and so we needed to address that as an issue in our foreign policy.

Dick Durbin asked if we could hold any transfers from Gitmo to federal correctional facilities in the United States safely, Zelikow answered:

Zelikow: Sir, we hold people who are far more dangerous in such institutions including quite dangerous terrorists like Ramzi Yousef, who's currently residing in a maximum security facility inside the US now. I'll also add that I've had the opportunity on behalf of one of the federal judges who have been working through the habeas petitions to be asked to examine classified files and provide expert advice on holding these folks and one of the things that strikes me now and struck me then is we have a vast amount of experience in how to judge the continued incarceration of highly dangerous prisoners since we do this with thousands of prisoners every month all over the United States including some really quite dangerous people. We routinely make these decisions...

I think the United States knows something about prisons, since we hold the most prisoners in the world. Sen. Jim Webb is setting his eyes squarely on reforming the prison system in America. Glenn Greenwald has an excellent piece on Webb's proposal. Good for him.

And by holding Guantanamo detainees here, it would create more jobs for corrections workers wherever they are held.

So far, Obama has only nominated one ambassador - career professional Susan Rice as ambassador to the UN. Here she is in September talking about Obama's foreign policy.

Following up on reports of Obama's intended Herculean cleaning of the Agean Stables at the Department of Defense, where the entire body of Bush-appointed deputies and under-whatevers are expected to be fired, the Washington Post now reports that the incoming Obama administration has told every single Bush political appointee as an ambassador that their services will no longer be required come January 20th.

That's an awful lot of ambassadors. An unusually high percentage of Bush's ambassador picks throughout his presidency - about half - have been "political appointees," as opposed to career foreign officers and without fail those political appointees have been big campaign donors, each raising over $100,000 for Bush and lots more for the Republican Party.

Nations that have had these, usually clueless, ambassadors foisted upon them just so that Bush could thank his biggest funders with a prestige sinecure include: Canada, Mexico, Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, Spain, Australia, Belgium, Hungary, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Singapore and the European Union as well as a host of smaller nations. The United States is the only nation which habitually staffs its top diplomatic positions in other countries with check-writing rank amateurs rather than professional diplomats.

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Informed Comment: The annual State Dept. report on terrorism wil cite a nearly 30% rise in terrorism over the previous year

Operation Eagle Eye: All those references to "voter fraud" which have been popping up in the dialogue around the fired U.S. Attorneys scandal isn't something new. It's a very old conservative obsession--one that goes back to the beginnings of the right-wing takeover of the Republican Party itself.  Rick also wrote this excellent piece on another 'conservative' obsession...

Feministe: The terrorism that dare not speak its name (Happy 3rd Blogiversary to Feministe!)

Blue Gal: Thank you to the fourteen people who were arrested in the Hart Senate Office Building this week for doing this

Ted Rall: Sometimes the truth aint funny...

HOLY CRAP: Pray dammit!...Christianists use cult-like "love bomb" tactics...Racist nutjob speaks publicly on behalf of one of the top three or four religious right groups in America...Catholic Bishop says Sheryl Crow "promotes moral evils"...Why do some self-proclaimed Christians oppose "hate crimes" legislation?...Pat Robertson's Christian Nationalist extravaganza...Should religion be playing such a huge role in American government?...Biblical Prophecy in the News...Glenn Beck, when he's not "thinking about killing Michael Moore", just loves him some "End of Days" prophecy. Here, it's the Apocalypse Coming Aug 22nd, 2006; here, it's an hour-long discussion with authors of the "Left Behind" novels, Tim LeHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins; here, Brother Beck and his guests--including Pat Robertson--ponder questions about the End Times...I prefer The Naz

Lawrence Wilkerson on CNN's Late Edition

Blitzer interviews Colin Powell's former State Dept. Chief of Staff about the "Cheney-Runsfeld cabal" and more...

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Posted by David Edwards

The Green Lantern

Paris Hilton, Michael Jackson, rotting corpses in the streets of Fallujah, what does it all mean for America? Subversity sums it all up in our featured article:

"The image of Paris, and her surreal reality closely mirrors another Republican ideal. The news, or lack of. The image of the world portrayed in the media is designed for Paris Hilton's reality. One where the events portrayed, and the actors involved, are sometimes real, sometimes government propaganda, and mostly used as a device to keep us baffled by the bullshit. The image of today, as portrayed on TV, is no less surreal that the Paris Hilton show."

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Tags: Fallujah, media, America, war, Paris Hilton

Editor's Notes & Rants: ThomasMc.com 

Democrats who voted with the RepubliCons Wednesday to destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by allowing oil exploitation: Akaka (HI), Inouye (HI), Landrieu (LA). Not an Irishman among 'em.

China tests 'D-Day invasion' of Taiwan.

After the US State Dept. accused China of mistreating prisoners, China shot back pointing out that the US is doing far worse. Today, the White House has decided to relabel such abuses by China as "positive steps"Fallujah, media, America, war, Paris Hilton