Hey, McCain, get the hell off my junior high school’s lawn!

I’ll admit that I missed it, mesmerized as I was by the soaring rhetoric that Republican Senator John McCain used to inspire the thousands of mostly male white people assembled in the Xcell Energy Center last Thursday night; apparently, there was some talk about the background.

Oh, who am I kidding? With McSame’s speech as empty as it was plodding, the eerie green (and then blue) glow that threatened to consume the candidate was practically all that I could think about! In fact, while fixated on the chroma key close-ups of McCain that made up the lion’s share of the TV coverage, I failed to take a good look at the building that served as the backdrop for the first eight minutes of the speech. It looked like a big old mansion with a great lawn—one of McCain’s twelve houses, I mused.

Later I heard some TV commentator say that it was the US Navel Academy. God knows where that idea came from. I mean, yes, that would have made some sense, McCain having followed his father and grandfather through Annapolis, but the image shown in St. Paul bore little resemblance to any of the iconic buildings of Canoe U.

It was only about 24 hours later that I heard the image was of what is now called Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, CA—AKA my junior high!

Looking at that picture now, it’s possible to see the name, right at the top of the building, that the school had back when I went there, Walter Reed Junior High School, but perhaps it was the recent restoration and the fresh paint that kept me from spotting the place where I spent three years of my life. And maybe it was the extra planters and fancy landscaping that kept me from recognizing the very patch of grass where I ruled the roost as DJ for the “ninth grade lawn” (still one of my crowning achievements). However, had I recognized my alma mater, it’s hard to imagine how I could have been much more perplexed than I already was. . . but more on that in a minute.

First, let me talk about Walter Reed’s reaction.

Principal Donna Tobin declined to comment because she was too busy with the first week of instruction, aides said. Later, however, she issued a statement declaring that "permission to use the front of our school for the Republican National Convention was not given by our school nor is the use of our school's picture an endorsement of any party or view."

By late afternoon, McCain's campaign was characterizing the use of the picture as a way of illustrating the candidate's call "for public education reforms that empower parents and students before bureaucrats and labor unions," as spokesman Tucker Bounds put it.

But Tamar Galatzan, who represents the North Hollywood area on the Los Angeles Board of Education, was having none of that. She said she was "flattered that Sen. McCain chose to use a school from my district as backdrop to his remarks" but that more federal resources for education seems "not a priority for the McCain/Palin ticket."

Using the school to illustrate McCain’s education reforms? Puh-lease! The emptiness of those so-called proposals was pathetic enough, can you not insult us further by asking us to believe that this building, familiar as a school to only the giant-screened, TiVo-maniacal few, was intentionally chosen as a symbol.

I expect, as many do, that some resident genius at the RNC went a-googling for an image of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and, having paid as little attention to this facility as McCain and his Bush Administration allies have over the past seven years, just assumed that this nice old school building was the federal facility.

(As a side note, this “old” middle school building was built in 1939—making it three years younger than John McCain!)

“Internet blogger” (you know, as opposed to the other kinds of bloggers) Lee Stranhan, a figure in the LA Times story about the screw up, has an alternate theory:

Stranhan, of Burbank, speculated that McCain's image of the school was borrowed from the TV series "West Wing." Actor Jimmy Smits' character announced his candidacy on the show with the middle school as a backdrop.

Of course, that theory sort of assumes that the folks that put together the Republicans’ dog and pony show knew something about television production—a hypothesis that pretty much falls apart when you watch the production debacle already nicknamed Green Screen of Death II.

As already mentioned, I was left slack-jawed by the singularly crappy quality of the production at last week’s RNC. The set looked cheap and unimaginative. The high polish of the stage floor made participants appear to be walking on water (OK, maybe that wasn’t an accident), or on shiny, shiny, black, patent leather (taste the whip!). And the interstitial film segments felt like they were the result of a random shuffle of images rather than edited to a well-crafted narrative script. (Here’s an image, and something about a Republican, and here’s something else, and now something from 15 years earlier, and here’s a staged battle scene, and a stock photo of some people. . . “country first.”)

And, of course, there were those video backdrops. Maybe (maybe) they were interesting inside the hall, but on TV, especially when rendered in close-up, they were black, green, or blue holes, threatening to devour everything within their gravitational pull. Inexcusable in any setting, but especially unfathomable in a made-for-TV event occurring in a campaign that had already seen other McCain backdrop fiascos and Stephen Colbert’s Green Screen Challenge. Criminy, isn’t stagecraft what these guys do best?!? I mean, they can’t run a government (or a war) to save their lives, but they are supposed to be the superior showmen. . . right?

It was as if somebody gave the Republican National Convention Committee a big tax refund, and, not knowing what the hell else to do with the money, they just went out and bought the biggest freaking foreign-made TV they could find (in this case, a 716 incher!) and called it an investment in our future.

Which is perhaps as close as the RNC ever got to understanding the plight of most working Americans.

I have yet to hear any McCain campaign official respond to the complaints about the unauthorized use of the picture of my junior high school—I certainly haven’t received an apology—nor have I seen any media reports that go to the heart of the authorized use issue.

While asking the school principle for her reaction was a good addition to the story, the LA Times didn’t go the logical next step. Walter Reed Middle School is a public institution; the authority for using its image rests not with the school, but with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). As best I can tell from the LAUSD’s website, use and/or photography of a school property without express written permission is prohibited. Maybe the broadcast of a stock shot of Walter Reed isn’t covered by that policy, but it would sure be great if someone asked the LAUSD.

And maybe, if the McCain team continues to insist that the use of the picture of the school was intentional, then someone might want to ask them if they inquired about permission themselves.

Until then, Johnny, get off of my ninth grade lawn!


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

LA Quake: No News is News

Most of my family lives in the Los Angeles area, so when I heard about the quake that struck Tuesday, I was concerned. . .

. . . until I heard it was “only” a 5.8 (later downgraded to a 5.4). Anything under a 6, and I think, “not to worry.”

I’ll let the LA Times pick up the story:

The earthquake that rattled Southern California on Tuesday might have caused devastation if it had taken place in some parts of the world, but relatively strict building codes ensured that most of the region's infrastructure -- homes, schools, freeways and rail systems -- rolled with the magnitude 5.4 punch, which was centered near Chino Hills and felt as far as Las Vegas.

The story also points out that most of the buildings in the area had been built or retrofitted since codes were strengthened in the wake of the 1994 Northridge quake, so it’s not just that this temblor might have caused devastation if it had struck in a different place, it very well might have caused destruction and death if it had happened in a different time. Had this been LA circa 1968, the “news” might have been filled with news.

At first blush, that might seem like a matter-of-fact point—big deal, things get better, hooray for science! That sort of thing. But the underlying message is far from run-of-the-mill. Tuesday’s Chino Quake was an example of the triumph of government regulation; it was an example of what a responsible and responsive government can and should do for its citizens. As Sara Robinson notes:

The fact that Los Angeles returned to normal (as if anything in Los Angeles can ever be considered normal) within just a few hours is one of those invisible but important lessons in the collective power of a functioning government -- the kind of non-controvertible, essential fact that conservatives tend to gloss right over when they talk about shrinking government until they can drown it in a bathtub.

California's seismic codes are serious, strict, and effective. The state has been working on them for 80 years now, refining them through the years after every major quake to incorporate new knowledge and engineering practices. (A major revision this year has recently sent all the state's architects, engineers, and contractors back to school yet again.) To see the results of this ongoing effort, consider the 1931 Long Beach quake, a 6.4 shaker that damn near flattened Long Beach, killed 120 people, and caused over $40 million (in 1931 dollars) in property damage. And then reflect on the fact that in 1989, it took a quake eleven times bigger -- the 7.1 Loma Prieta quake -- to create a comparable amount of damage.

. . . .

Generous state support is one reason CalTech was able to build the world's first and foremost seismology department, where the Richter scale and the seismograph were developed. Decades of government competence has also ensured that California's county building inspectors are widely considered the toughest, smartest, least corruptible pros in the country.

Forty years after the Long Beach quake, a very young me lived through the San Fernando (or Sylmar) Quake, which weighed in at 6.6, killed 65, and caused about a half-billion dollars in damage—and scared the shit out of me—but our house was built to post-Long Beach standards, and suffered only minor damage.

My parents’ house was further upgraded to incorporate what was learned and legislated after the San Fernando quake, so when the stronger and much closer Northridge quake rung in a January 1994 morning at 6.7, the house lost its old brick chimney, but otherwise remained intact.

So, the next time a selfish, single-minded Republican (or Libertarian, for that matter) asks what government has ever done for the American people, you can point to me and my family, and the countless other Californians who have survived numerous major seismic events thanks to improvements instituted and enforced by a strong government.

But perhaps my continued existence will not be considered a plus. In that case, point out how much money was saved by the city, state, and federal government because they didn’t have to rebuild as much infrastructure as would have been the case in an unregulated world. And they didn’t have to provide as much disaster relief as they might have, either.

Or point out how much private industry has saved because they have standing buildings with safe, healthy workers inside. Look how fast Los Angeles got back to work on Tuesday—without improved and enforced building codes, things wouldn’t have looked the same.

I have often worried that after nearly thirty years of Republicans underfunding and defunding our social institutions, many in this country have forgotten what government can do for them. They don’t know what to expect, nor do they know what they have a right to demand. A simple contrast drawn between the neglected levees in Louisiana or Iowa, or the neglected bridges of Minnesota, and the highway overpasses, homes, and businesses that stand safe and sound today in and around Los Angeles is a good place to start remembering.


(cross-posted on Daily Kos and The Seminal)

Reporters reveal source in the Spitzer story: MySpace

With the official resignation of New York Governor Eliot Spitzer now out of the way, it appears that the establishment media can get back to reporting on what by all accounts clearly matters most in this scandal: the sex.

Though most national and New York media outlets did lead with the actual resignation speech, delivered in Manhattan around midday, Wednesday, the fact that the embattled governor was now to be the less embattled ex-governor made Spitzer’s troubles, and how we all were made aware of them, essentially, old news.

So, what’s new—or more to the point, what’s news? Why it’s the identity of the 22-year-old woman known as “Kristen” in the affidavit that details her liaison with Client 9 (Spitzer) at a DC hotel just last month. The local NBC affiliate newscast gave her identity substantially more time than Spitzer’s speech. ABC’s “investigative reporter” Brian Ross gobbled up the first segment of Nightline with breathless accounts of the woman’s “history” and “career.” The Los Angeles Times and New York Times each feature the story prominently on the front page of their online editions. The NY Times even runs a picture—right under one of Spitzer and his wife.

It was apparently the New York Times—the first paper to reveal the governor’s involvement with the prostitution ring—that “broke” the story of “Kristen’s” real identity, and I suppose they deserve some sort of credit because they actually went to the trouble of calling this woman and conducting at least a cursory interview. But the NY Times, and the three other outlets that I mention, mostly base their reports on that up-to-the-minute, of the moment, always factual, and thoroughly unimpeachable source known as MySpace.

Yes, you read that right.

Thanks to her MySpace page, we all now “know” that “Kristen” left a “broken home” at 17, has been “homeless,” has done “drugs,” but is now “all about [her] music.” It is possible that this is true (and the NYT did speak with the woman, her lawyer, and her mother), but there is absolutely nothing in any of the reports that would lead one to believe that a page on MySpace doesn’t actually have to be completely factual. (“The page is candid, reciting the disturbing details of a hard life,” reports the LA Times, who did not speak with “Kristen,” herself.)

The television reports are the worst—simply reciting the text from the webpage, with only oblique references to its provenance, or equally oblique camera angles of highlighted text on a computer screen—but even the papers rely overwhelmingly on MySpace without a hint of irony or suspicion. Eleven of the 23 paragraphs in the NYT article mention, quote, or attribute information to the MySpace page.

And then there are remarkable revelations such as this (from the NY Times):

Music is her first love, and on the MySpace page, Ms. [Kristen] mentions Patsy Cline, Frank Sinatra, Christina Aguilera and Lauryn Hill among a long list of influences, including her brother, Kyle. (She also lists Whitney Houston, Madonna, Mary J. Blige and Amy Winehouse as her top MySpace friends.)

Well, she did fuck a governor, so I suppose it is possible that Madonna and Mary J. Blige are her friends. I’ll admit, to again give them credit, that the NYT did at least call them “MySpace friends.” WNBC, by contrast, went to the trouble of finding a less famous area man also listed as one of “Kristen’s” MySpace friends to ask him what he thought of all the recent news.

To no one’s surprise—except maybe the team at WNBC—the guy didn’t know “Kristen” and had never met her.

The LA Times had a similarly hot lead:

Nick Hanson of South Huntington was surprised to find out that someone on his MySpace friends list was involved in the Spitzer saga.

"I really never met her or talked to her," he said. "I just added her as a friend," after she sent him an invitation. "It seemed like she was very interested in music."

I hope you are laughing half as hard as I did.

Oh, and, “Kristen’s” music? Well, I will let some other netizen write that post.

The TV and newspaper reports all ran numerous pictures of “Kristen,” also taken directly from her MySpace page. Only the New York Times takes the time to explain the path from “Kristen’s” birth name, to her legal name, to the name on her MySpace page (all three are different—and none of them contain “Kristen”); WNBC gave her birth name, the other two just used the MySpace name as if it were her legal name.

I’m not sure that any of this naming names is a good thing, by the way. I have scrupulously avoided using any names other than her “hooker name” (though I understand that I link to the articles) because I don’t think she is really the story here (she might be a story, but well, not one that is going to keep me coming back for more). And, even though she seems a willing participant in her “outing,” I’m not entirely sure that this is the kind of PR she wanted (nor do I really feel like being part of it, even if she did).

But, to return to the heavy use of MySpace—I hope I am not the only one who is troubled by this. First, simply, because I fail to see how merely regurgitating large parts of someone’s self-generated profile from a social website is really news (I already am sure it isn’t “reporting”); second, and perhaps even more troubling, is that none of the stories give me much confidence that the reporters actually understand what MySpace is, or why it isn’t really a fantastic frame on which to hang the bulk of a news piece.

What it is, of course, is easy. I will resist the obvious joke, here, but some slightly different metaphors regarding pimps, prostitutes, and junkies might be of use.

I will, however, leave that to your imagination, because I actually want to finish on a high note—for journalism, that is—or a low note, if you think about the world we now live in.

As I mentioned in an update at the bottom of yesterday’s post, journalists (and I mean that sincerely) Jim Sleeper (of Talking Points Memo) and Wayne Barrett (of the Village Voice) discussed the Eliot Mess on WNYC with host Brian Lehrer, Albany specialist Andrea Bernstein, and NPR’s Adam Davidson. It was one of the more sober and serious discussions of the scandal itself, and, more important to me, the politics of the investigation, and the leak that revealed it.

Jim Sleeper posted something similar to his on-air comments later on TPM Café:

Eliot Spitzer’s resignation is a tragedy in the strictest classical sense: The legal substance of his offenses pales before his stupidity, hypocrisy, and, yes, immorality in committing them. . . .

But while Spitzer brought this on himself, that doesn’t let his Republican inquisitors entirely off the hook.

Their professional narrative is that the case simply fell into their laps and that they handled it with all due restraint: A routine bank review turned up “suspicious activity;” a routine follow-up by the IRS and then the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network showed that a public official was involved, thereby bumping the matter to the FBI and the U.S. Attorney, who obtained a wiretap of conversations which, of course, they had to listen to and parse. All they did after that was inform Spitzer, as the law also requires them to do.

And then they stepped back and watched him implode.

Not quite. Prosecutors were indeed required to tell Spitzer about the wiretap, but in no way were they required or indeed permitted to tell anyone else. Spitzer outed himself only after one or more of the dozen assistant U.S. Attorneys and scores of IRS, FBI, and other agents and managers in Washington and New York involved in this case committed the crime of leaking it to the New York Times.

Again, I am far from suggesting that that excuses him. I am asking a question or two about what else was going on, parallel to his own self-destruction.

Was the Justice Department as innocent and surprised by its findings as the official narrative insists? Will we now have the Justice Department moving heaven and earth to turn up its leakers? The legacy of George Bush’s disgraced former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and of too many Republican U.S. Attorneys casts a long shadow here.

Wayne Barrett perhaps went a step further. There is no written transcript of the show, but Barrett makes no bones about saying that the investigation “raises all kinds of questions,” and “smacks of a case that had a single target.”

Barrett notes that the Feds just renewed their warrant for the wiretap on February 21st, and brought down that wire only two weeks later. “Why would you rush the investigation?” asks Barrett, who says that he has never seen anything quite like this. “Very strange. . . . Contrary to ordinary practice.”

Barrett believes that the Republican prosecutor got the guy the Feds wanted, and took down the wire before they rolled up anymore “fat cats.” Citing the statistic that the Bush DoJ has gone after Democrats six times more often than Republicans, Barrett doubts that prosecutors would have “done the same thing” if they had caught a Republican.

Like Sleeper, I know that this doesn’t explain or excuse Spitzer’s hypocrisy, but like Sleeper and Barrett, I am pretty sure there is more to this story than the official, un-partisan narrative.

To come to this conclusion (or, if not quite a conclusion, an awareness), all I did was ask a few simple questions and apply a sense of historical context. Sleeper and Barrett clearly did the same. I have not surveyed the pages of every one of “Kristen’s” friends, but I am guessing that they don’t include that much context or history about the US Attorney scandal, warrantless surveillance, or the partisan machinations of the Bush Administration. I have digested the stories from four news outlets built on the MySpace “source,” and it seems that asking questions about, well, about much of anything, really, is more than we can ask of those “investigative journalists.”

Thank god we at least have the sex to keep us interested.


(cross-posted on The Seminal and Daily Kos)

Strange fruit

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Today’s LA Times’ top of the page news analysis has the basic “strategy” of the stay-the-course talk you are hearing this week from Gen. David Petraeus and his White House puppet masters pretty much pegged:

The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions, yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush's plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor.

The plans outlined by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, would retain a large force in the country -- perhaps more than 100,000 troops -- when the time comes for Bush to move out of the White House in January 2009.

And the NY Times editorial board was none too impressed, either:

For months, President Bush has been promising an honest accounting of the situation in Iraq, a fresh look at the war strategy and a new plan for how to extricate the United States from the death spiral of the Iraqi civil war. The nation got none of that yesterday from the Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It got more excuses for delaying serious decisions for many more months, keeping the war going into 2008 and probably well beyond.

. . . .

The headline out of General Petraeus’s testimony was a prediction that the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to 130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would only bring American troops to the level that were in Iraq when Mr. Bush announced his “surge” last January. And it’s the rough equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity.

That’s because US military forces cannot sustain current levels in Iraq past early Spring without precipitously undermining the capabilities of the Army and Marines. By ‘round about the time of the Republican National Convention next Summer, US troop levels in Iraq will roughly resemble the pre-2007 escalation totals—and Republican candidates up and down the ticket will claim that President Bush has brought us closer to “victory” in Iraq.

While several other editorials also recognize this “kick the can” strategy, it is a much-touted tactic—the arming of Sunni warlords in Anbar Province (which, in truth, started months before Bush announced his “surge”—and was actually proposed by the Sunnis three years before that)—that is providing the White House and wingnuts, alike, with the political cover necessary to keep WINOs (wobblers in name only) and the beltway pundit class in line.

Well, almost. Take a gander at noted conservative beltway insider George Will’s Washington Post column. Will is also unambiguously unimpressed with the Bush administration’s September policy roll-out, but—his declaration of improving security aside (how can it be “real” if it is mismeasured?)—it is his assessment of what lies beneath this “improvement” that bears special attention:

First, measuring sectarian violence is problematic: The Post reports that a body with a bullet hole in the front of the skull is considered a victim of criminality; a hole in the back of the skull is evidence of sectarian violence. But even if violence is declining, that might be partly because violent sectarian cleansing has separated Sunni and Shiite communities. This homogenization of hostile factions -- trained and armed by U.S. forces -- may bear poisonous fruit in a full-blown civil war.

Got that? Homogenized hostile factions “trained and armed by US forces” resulting in a “full-blown civil war.”

I know what you’re thinking—there is already a full-blown civil war playing out daily in Iraq—but think a bit more: imagine a full-blown civil war with each faction trained and armed by the US.

If Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his White House pals get their way, you won’t have to imagine too hard.

You heard on Monday, and will hear more and more in coming days, about the new new administration “strategy” (which, again, is really a tactic) of “bottom up” security in Iraq—and that “bottom up” tactic means arming sectarian and ethnic factions all across Iraq, just like the US military did in Anbar.

It is important now to note that the “23 tribes”—as administration hacks call them—that are now supposedly fighting alongside US troops in Anbar Province to help stamp out the nefarious forces we feel the political need to call “al-Qaeda in Iraq” have sworn allegiance to US military commanders, and not to any Iraqi national government. That there is no grand national “strategy” that can work with this Anbar tactic is evident on its face, but, furthermore, we must ask: what happens when this tactic begins to fail?

I say “when” and not “if” because I would like to go on record right now and say it will, in the long run, fail. It will fail if your goal is to build a strong, multi-ethnic, cross-sectarian government in Iraq; it will fail if your goal is to provide predictable and long-running security for US occupying forces.

Perhaps you are now wondering what could possibly make me so pessimistic after four-and-a-half years of Bush’s “victory strategy,” so, let me explain. If Ambassador Crocker’s proposal to expand the “bottom up” plan is to come to fruition, then (and this was more than implied) the US will have to also arm and train—and bribe—Shiite militias (or “tribes,” if you must) so that they, too, won’t try to kill Americans. The question of which Shiite faction we will choose to arm notwithstanding, what will the Sunni minority think when larger Shiite populations get even more arms and money to fight those that they (the Shiites) call enemies? Sooner or later, one faction or another will decide that some other group is getting a dangerously unfair slice of America’s largesse, and then, all bets are off.

Except my bet that this latest strategic tactic will be a bloody failure.

And the bet that it will be up to the next administration to try to mop up Bush’s bloody mess.

As I observed exactly three months ago, you reap what you sow. As George Will now knows, like Abel Meeropol did long ago, our harvest will be a strange, bitter, and shameful one.

(cross-posted to Daily Kos; thoughts on the anniversary of 9/11 over on guy2k)

Plastic: It’s What’s for Dinner

A black mark for the other white meat:

Human consumption of tainted hogs probed
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
April 25, 2007

Health officials are investigating whether humans may have consumed pork from animals that ate feed containing a chemical linked to a recall of pet foods, the Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday.

In California, traces of the chemical melamine were detected in hog urine at a farm in Stanislaus County in the Modesto area. The California Department of Food and Agriculture said it traced the hogs to several Northern California meat vendors, and most of the animals were quarantined.

Only the American Hog Farm in Ceres and a vendor in Half Moon Bay had sold the pork to customers. Both operate custom slaughterhouses that sell only to individuals for personal use — not to supermarkets.

It is important to note here that it was the hog urine, and not the feed, that was tested. So, on the bright side, maybe the pigs get their melamine somewhere else—maybe they eat off of fancy mid-century modern plastic plates, for instance—and not from tainted grain or grain gluten. On the dark side, maybe the melamine contamination is prevalent in hog feed across the country, and not just at this farm. We don’t know—at this point, as best I can figure, the FDA hasn’t tested much beyond the dog and cat food stage of this still emerging food safety crisis (and the LA Times story indicates there is some debate about how widespread the distribution was for this particular suspect feed).

Ever reactive, the Bush FDA has now decided to start looking at a selection of six grain products that are used in foods for human consumption.

"We're going to target firms that we know are receiving imported products," said David Acheson, chief medical officer of the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in a conference call with reporters. "The goal is obviously to sample as much as we can."

Of course, when Acheson says, “as much as we can,” he is referring to the amount they can afford to test—not the amount they can get their hands on—and there, as they say, is where the fat hits the griddle.

The entire FY 2007 budget for the Food and Drug administration was $1.9 billion—that’s $1.9 billion for the food AND the drugs. After slashing food inspection budgets in past years, the recent E. coli outbreaks traced to spinach and lettuce have motivated the Bush Administration to propose increasing the amount spent on food safety in 2008 by $10.6 million. . . .

Or, roughly, what the US spends in Iraq EVERY HOUR.

The entire FDA budget? That will cost you about a week of the Bush-Cheney fiasco.

So, while Sunni insurgents kill Americans “over there,” maybe, because we don’t have the money to spend on a proper food safety strategy, cheap Chinese foodstuffs can kill Americans over here.

I suppose that’s one way to beef up “homeland security.”


(cross-posted to Daily Kos)