The past few days have seen a marked shift in White House rhetoric regarding Russia and Georgia, as well as several indications that Cheney is resurgent.  On issues of both domestic and foreign policy, Cheney's view has rather dramatically won the week.

First it was the Endangered Species Act.  Now it is Georgia.

Apparently, women aren't Americans.

The McCain campaign needs to lay off the rampant fear and hatred of women that it is peddling on its website.  To some extent, the visual message amounts to a merely laughable "no girls allowed in the treehouse" immaturity -- but it is also real militaristic misogyny.  A sort of Mickey-to-Rocky "Women Weaken Legs!" theme.  Women being "sex" and all, in the adolescent male mind the McCain campaign has decided to target.

The White House is acting immediately to eviscerate the Endangered Species Act.  After a 30 day period for "public comment," a new policy will be put in place: government officials will no longer need to get the opinion of experts before approving projects that will kill endangered species.

AP IMPACT: Bush to relax protected species rules

By DINA CAPPIELLO – 4 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct. The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

Update 08/12/08 12:36am by LithiumCola: Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse has an excellent diary up with additional details and analysis.

Update: 12:51pm EST 08/09/08 by LithiumCola: the thread is getting more interesting than the diary.  Several commenters are offering different thoughts about the rationals of the various actors in the Georgian conflict.  My theory that the US is tacitly allowing the Russian actions in exchange for a lax Russian attitude to Iran is being countered by others -- who make compelling cases -- that the situation is better described as a diplomatic blunder by Rice/Bush, who underestimated what Russian actions would be.  An interpretation backed by stories like this one at CNN.  

"For the life of me, I can't image that being a proportionate response to the charge that Georgia has attacked Russian peacekeepers," the official said. "It's hard for us to understand what Russia's plan is here."

My diary follows.

President Bush and Prime Minister Putin were sitting a few seats apart at the Olympic Games opening ceremony.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov implied to Secretary of State Rice in a phone call that ending the fighting in Georgia was the responsibility of the US.

Below I have put together some maps and info from wikipedia and the University of Texas website to give background on the situation, as well as culled some news reports on the conflict.  This is a fairly disorderly diary, meant only as a sort of information bucket.  Please use the thread to add/correct information.  

Continuing my occasional series on Worst ____ Evers, I thought I would do one on worst movie lines!

These can be lines from bad movies that are just so bad they're practically the best part of the movie, or else lines in otherwise good movies that are so terrible they make you shake your head and moan.

Here goes!

The problem with "evolutionary psychology stories" is that any idiot can tell you a story about "why humans think this way," stamp the label "evolutionary psychology" on their own explanation, an viola!  It looks as though the person just said something scientifically valid.  

My guess is that when we hear someone offer an explanation to us in terms of evolutionary psychology, we think to ourselves something along these lines: "Fair enough.  After all, 'evolution' is a valid part of biology, and 'psychology' is a science, so 'evolutionary psychology' must be just as sciencey as they are, right?  I mean, there are departments of 'evolutionary psychology' at universities, right?  Furthermore, the person offering me an explanation told me a story about our evolutionary ancestors, and how could it not be true that the way we think comes in part from forces of natural selection operating on our ancestors?"

Update 8/6/08, 8:15pm EST by LithiumCola: several commenters are taking me to be attacking the entire sub-discipline of evolutionary psychology.  That is not my intent.  I am attacking bad arguments from pop-evolutionary-psychology.  My apologies for the bad writing on my part.

How many times have you watched a film and what struck you the most was one of the characters?  You think to yourself, I have never seen this character before, and you find yourself entranced, wondering what he, she, or it might do next, hoping it will be as funny, quirky, scary, as what came before -- above all, that it will be as original and unexpected as what came before.

The character might be better than the movie; an actor rising above mediocre material.  The whole movie might be great, but still what you remember the most, when you think back, is that amazing person you saw protrayed on the screen.

This doesn't happen very often to me; maybe once every three years, or so.  Most film character are slight variations on a few stock themes.  For most movies, that's all they need to be.  Some movies rely on a strong character in order work.  Sometimes, and this is the most delightful surprise, a movie which really had no need to present the audience with a strikingly original personality, a fictional person you'll never forget, but the movie does, anyway.  

Sarah Sewall is one of Barack Obama's national security advisers.  She was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (under Clinton) and is now Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy as well as a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In May 2008 Sewall posted a comprehensive working paper titled "A Strategy of Conservation: American Power and the International System" to the Carr Center's website.  (Sewall's paper here: 21 page PDF)  In this paper, Sewall lays out an overall framework, vision, and rationale for US foreign policy as well as several more specific proposals for advancing it.

Kirkuk is back with a vengeance.

Forgotten for a while in the discusions over Bush's failed struggle for a Status of Forces Agreement, the fight for control of Kirkuk is again causing disruptions.  In tomorrows NYT and WaPo, we read that the much-anticipated provincial elections are going to be delayed, probably until next year.  Kurdish politicians walked out on an important and strangely secret vote as Shiites and Sunnis voted to move troops into Kurdistan and strip the Kurds of political control of Kirkuk.  Reporters Sudarsan Raghavan and Ernesto Londoño at WaPo quote a US "Provincial Reconstruction Team leader" who says, with amazing optimism, ""The likelihood of a violent uprising is unlikely," he said. "A U.S. combat brigade sits up here."

The New York Times story by Allisa Rubin is remarkably detailed, and sufficiently wonkish about Iraqi politics that it is not too dismaying to see a lack of analysis yet, on the usual websites I look to for this sort of thing.

The Washington Post is reporting that US officials have given up in their attempts to finalize a Status of Forces agreement with the Iraqi government during the Bush Administration.  This is a major victory for the Iraqi people.  The totality of the middle finger being shown to Bush, here, should not be overlooked.

Let us compare "then" and "now."

Then (June 11, 2008):

MESEBERG, Germany, June 11-- President Bush said Wednesday he is confident the United States will reach an agreement on the role of U.S. forces in Iraq, calling opposition to a U.S. proposal part of the "noise" of a freer Iraqi society.

The Republican narrative about the current situation in Iraq is that "the Surge has worked."  The Surge, we are told, provided the security conditions which have resulted in decreased violence, a move toward relative normalcy for Iraqis, and -- ironically -- a chance for Prime Minister Maliki and the Iraqi parliament to reject US demands for a sustained occupational force in Iraq.  

We are told that the very fact that Maliki is able to demand a timetable, and to reject US demands for among other things, contractor immunity and free military reign in Iraq, is an indication of just how successful General Petraeus and President Bush's "surge" strategy has worked.  The very strategy Senator McCain had urged all along.  This shows that McCain is wiser than Obama, even if it does have the ironic effect of benefiting Obama in the election.

On Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki said that he wanted to implement a timetable for a US pullout from Iraq.  Yahoo news called this a Maliki Stunner.  Here is what he said:

"The current trend is to reach an agreement on a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or a memorandum of understanding to put a timetable on their withdrawal."

Maliki's people reinforced the assertion.  "Maliki and his top security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie added that Iraq intends to link even a limited accord to a timetable for the withdrawal of US forces."

This is good news.  But here is what to watch for in coming days.

You pay all these taxes but you don't want anything in return for it.  You don't want free health care.  You don't want time off of work.  You don't want anything.  You're not selfish enough.

You get mad when someone is taking welfare and sitting on their ass.  What have you got against sitting on your ass?  The whole point behind having a government and paying taxes is to have more time to sit on your ass.  That's what technology is for.  You Americans work longer than anyone, pay all these taxes, make all these robots, and then not only don't you sit on your ass, but you get mad when anyone else does.  You're fucking crazy.  

In recent weeks, bewildered Americans have been asking what the angry man on television is doing.  Speculation that he is part of a new viral ad campaign for Centrum Silver was only surpassed by rumors of a new form of performance art.

"I didn't buy the vitamin ad idea," said Oregon resident A. Brearley.  "I mean, I get that he's appearing in a lot of places and has a lot of energy, so it could be an ad for vitamins.  But in advertisements, the point is not usually to call the customer a jerk.  Actually I had no idea what it was all about," Brearley added.

So today I read Bush's remarks on the passing of Jesse Helms, and I wondered how anyone could say such wrongheaded things:

"Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called "the Miracle of America." So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July. He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: 'The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven.' Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race, and we pray he finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve throughout his life."

-- President Bush.

And now, tonight, the Washington Post has answered my question.  I should have seen it right away.

So earlier today I was reading about an upcoming election in Russia.  One of the candidates was a pilot in the Soviet  air force in the 1980s.  He flew a Sukhoi Su-25 close-support fighter in the Soviet Air Force during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  Along with 130 other Soviet fixed-wing aircraft and 333 helicopters, the candidate's Su-25 was shot down by the Afghans.

I'm not one of the resident global warming experts, or even amatures, on Daily Kos, and one of them should be writing this diary -- but this story in the UK Independent calls for a diary.

Exclusive: No ice at the North Pole

Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Friday, 27 June 2008

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.