Bad Deeds for 7-28-2008

Fear-Mongering Conservatives Make Up Stories About American Boys Held Captive in a Pakistani Madrassa – Since early July, Republican Congressman Michael McCaul of Texas has been misleading Americans about two young Pakistani-American boys who McCaul claimed were being “held in there against their will” at a international madrassa school, which McCaul says has Taliban ties in this FOX interview.

After hearing about the two Atlanta children in a 2008 documentary called Karachi Kids, McCaul, who sees everything through red-threat-level colored glasses, immediately began exploiting homeland security fears in the name of the two children, as evidenced in this article from the Houston Chronicle on McCaul’s website. He refers to schools like the one the boys were at as “jihadist seminaries” and claims that they are “creating a new breed of terrorist.” However, in his haste to turn this into an election-year fist-bump, McCaul failed to check with his own State Department, the parents of the children or to do any sort of his own research to find out what the situation at the international school was.

If you do a check on any Internet search engine, you will find plenty of conservative blogs spreading this story. However, as CNN reported Sunday night, the media-hype surrounding McCaul’s messianic quest to bring these children home is essentially just that: overblown hype about two children who were in fact not being held against their will and not being trained at a radical Islamic school at all.

CNN video report

McCain Says Do Away With Affirmative Action – John McCain said Sunday that he supports a proposed ballot initiative in his home state that would prohibit affirmative action policies from state and local governments. A decade ago, he called a similar effort “divisive.”

McCain Confused Again: Says ‘I didn’t use the word timetable,’ But It’s On Video – After Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki endorsed Obama’s 16-month withdrawal plan, McCain changed his position, telling Wolf Blitzer that “it was a pretty good timetable” in the video at the link below. But now the Senator is denying he ever used the word timetable at all and reasserting “conditions on the ground” as the overriding factor for when US troops can leave Iraq. “I didn’t use the word timetable,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in an interview airing Sunday.

When asked if Obama was right that the US invasion of Iraq “inflamed the Muslim world,” McCain said that his own prediction of Americans being greeted as liberators was correct. “We were greeted as liberators,” McCain said.

Contractor Made Little Progress on Iraq Projects, But Got Paid Anyhow – The U.S. government paid a California contractor $142 million to build prisons, fire stations and police facilities in Iraq that it never built or finished, according to audits by a watchdog office.

The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) said Parsons of Pasadena, Calif., received the money, part of a total of $333 million but only completed about one-third of the projects, which also included courthouses and border control stations. The inspector general’s office is expected to release two detailed audits today, evaluating Parsons’s work on the contract, which is worth up to $900 million.

“Far less was accomplished under this contract than originally planned,” the inspector general wrote. “Millions of dollars in waste are likely associated with incomplete, terminated and abandoned projects under this contract.”

What Liberal Bias? Network News Comments Are More Negative Toward Obama Than McCain – ABC, NBC and CBS were tougher on Obama than on Republican John McCain during the first six weeks of the general-election campaign, according to a study conducted by The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, where researchers have tracked network news content for two decades. During the evening news, the majority of statements from reporters and anchors on all three networks are neutral, the center found. And when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative. Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative.

Although McCain Says He Knows How to Catch bin Laden, He’s Apparently Keeping it Secret So We Can Stay in Danger Until After He’s Elected – On Saturday’s Situation Room, when Wolf Blitzer asked McCain about his vow to catch Osama bin Laden, John McCain said, “Well, I’m not gonna telegraph a lot of the things that I’m gonna do, because then it might compromise our ability to do so. But look, I know the area. I’ve been there. I know war. I know how to win wars. And I know how to improve our capabilities so that we will capture Osama bin Laden…I know how to do it.”

Which begs four obvious questions:
1) Is John McCain privy to some intelligence or strategy that would better our chances of capturing bin Laden?
2) If so, why hasn’t he shared this information with the current administration?
3) Would he rather win the election than see bin Laden captured?
4) Also, exactly which war(s) has he won?
Would somebody in the MSM please…PLEASE ask him any/all of these?! Please? Seriously — how many stupid things does this guy get to say before somebody with a microphone calls him on it?

House GOP Leader Says “[Alaskan Wildlife] Couldn’t Care Less Whether…The Pipeline Was There” – Last night, on Glenn Beck’s CNN Headline News program, Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) falsely claimed that wildlife in Alaska are not affected by oil operations in Alaska. Animals “couldn’t care less whether…the pipeline was there, or the oil company was there,” he said. Glenn Beck similarly argued that wildlife can’t tell if the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline is a “tree or a pipeline,” and said that the northern reaches of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — where Boehner hopes to drill — are a “barren wasteland.” Beck and Boehner are wrong. Far from “not caring” about the presence of oil operations at the 800-square mile Prudhoe Bay facility, native species are dramatically affected. Scientific surveys have shown that the Central Arctic caribou herd has been “crowded out” due to drilling: [The survey] showed that the caribou reduced their use of the more heavily developed Prudhoe Bay oil fields by 78 percent, and their east-west movements declined by 90 percent — a sign oil activity can impact a herd’s movements. More details at the link.

EPA Chief Won’t Explain Climate Choices – Environmental Protection Agency chief Stephen Johnson has declined to explain before Congress how a conclusion he made last year that global warming put the public in danger could lead to a decision not to regulate greenhouse gases. In a 28-page document the White House and EPA have refused to release, the agency last December said global warming could endanger public welfare, according to excerpts released Thursday by a Senate committee. The hearing, which was going to examine the role of the White House in EPA decisions, particularly on global warming, was canceled.

Coal Mining Operations Ignore Worker Safety Concerns – The operators of a Utah mine at the center of a collapse that led to nine fatalities last August have been fined 1.6 million dollars, health and safety officials announced Thursday. The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) said the operators of the Crandall Canyon Mine had failed to report repeated collapses at the facility which meant inspectors were unable to assess practices there.

Two federal reports released on Thursday reveal previously unknown details about the August 6th disaster. Now we know, for example, that the sheer force of the collapse probably killed the six workers who were trapped in the mine pretty quickly. So, they were probably dead long before three rescue workers died 10 days later trying to save them.

In a statement, Richard Stickler, assistant secretary of labor for the MSHA, said the tragedy had stemmed from mine operator Genwal Resources’ “reckless failure” to report three previous coal “outbursts,” including one just three days before the initial incident on August 6. …”MSHA also found that the operator was taking more coal than allowed from the barrier pillars and the floor. This dangerously weakened the strength of the roof support.”

OK, coal mining destroys the land, kills those who mine it, destroys their health, and is bad for us when we burn it as fuel. What else do you need to know?

McCain Playing With Lobbyists Again – As Senator John McCain waited to speak at the annual awards dinner of the International Republican Institute, a democracy-building group he has led for 15 years, lobbyists and business executives dominated the stage at a Washington hotel ballroom.
The parade of lobbyists and fund-raisers at the dinner is emblematic of Mr. McCain’s tenure at the institute, one of a pair of nonprofit groups – taxpayer-financed and each allied with one of the two major political parties – that were created during the Reagan era to promote democracy in closed societies.

Operating without the sort of limits placed on campaign fund-raising, the institute under Mr. McCain has solicited millions of dollars for its operations from some 560 defense contractors, lobbying firms, oil companies and other corporations, many with issues before Senate committees Mr. McCain was on.

McCain Campaign Contributions Up Big … From Big Oil – Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling. Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month — three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban — compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.

Regards,

Jim