Melissa Bean — she of the Blue Dogs, the DLC, and the Bankruptcy Debt Peonage Bill — has done it again.
In a letter to a constituent, she states the following:
In defiance of the international community, Iran continues to develop a nuclear program, including the enrichment of uranium-a key step in producing an atomic weapon.
What neither Bean nor her staffers apparently know — or will admit — is that Iran is allowed to have a nuclear power program, so long as it’s strictly for civilian purposes such as generating power for homes and businesses. And as both the IAEA and the US’ 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran said (by the way, Cheney did all he could to suppress this NIE), Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program back in 2003.
Um, Representative Bean? Do you read a newspaper? Watch CNN? Go online? At all?!
More to the point, does anyone on your staff do any of that – including whoever it is you’ve tasked with answering your mail? Is there anybody in there? Hello? Bueller? Anybody?
Sounds like somebody could use a primary challenger, eh? Randi Scheurer, come on down!
Related posts:
- How Can We Negotiate in Good Faith with the Iranians When We Play Dumb About Israel’s Nukes?
- Second Iranian Nuclear Facility Discovered; Obama, Brown, Sarkozy Pledge Sanctions Unless IAEA is Allowed to Investigate
- Thomas Fingar on the Politics of NIE/NIAs
- John Kyl and Richard Perle: Nuclear Weapons Keep the World Safe, Except When People We Don’t Like Have Them
- Israel Gearing Up For Iran?
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Yet another (potential)
loser.
Hi PW, sounds like a vote for mccain.
Hey PW. I loved the Mr. Bean’s Holiday movie. Is Ms. Bean as funny?
Hey Phoenix Woman….
I posted this earlier yesterday. If the GOP (and now DINOs) know one thing, it’s how to deliver someone or something that people love to hate and then rally everyone with “let’s get those guys!!!”
What do we have to do to get rid of this embarrassment of a DINO? I’m ready to kick into the kitty of any candidate who takes her on in a primary.
Ironic — we’ve already got nukes and our leader is crazier than their guy is, having already destroyed at least one innocent country pretty much just for the hell of it.
Ding!!
Republicans and now Blue Dogs never let a few facts get in the way of their story. Once they put their story together (no matter how many it is subsequently discredited and debunked) they stick to it. If the Iranians bulldozed Natanz, if Iran ceased to exist tomorrow due to a rip in space-time, politicians like Bean would still be touting the dangers of its nuclear weapons program.
I seem to recall from Bush and Olmert’s press conference this morning that Bush stated Iran should not be allowed to enrich uranium for civilian purposes or have that KNOWLEDGE because if they had it for civilian purposes they could always later use it in another way. This is going to be a big problem.
I just sent an email to her office with a link to this post. I’m not in the 8th district of Illinois. She said she couldn’t reply, but I don’t know if she or her staff will read it. Maybe some 8th district pups could email her.
Froomkin by the way nails Bush moving from his claim that there would be a peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians by the end of this year to there would be a vision about what one would look like. Not to worry, Condi has been having these visions for years and we have all seen how well she has done in accomplishing them.
I keep asking Arlin Specter ,my esteemed Senator who has knows bullets can change course in mid air, if he supports a nuclear free Middle East, for starters and guess what, I’m still waiting for an answer.
You know if Iran starts making nuclear weapons there is the problem of depleted uranium to get rid of which means they would have to attack a country that is defenseless and didn’t attack them to dump that radioactive shit on them. Is that what these clowns are afraid of?
ot
I thought the announcement by the Culinary Workers endorsement was excellent and especially the part where they explained the reason that Obama has stood and picketed with them against the hotels. This is a long and bitter strike.
Rudee has a security problem…he must have a new girlfriend
This is more of Bush’s new sale’s pitch that Iran is a threat precisely because there is not evidence that it is a threat. This approach was first used by Wolfowitz and Team B when they asserted that the USSR had undetectable subs and the reason we knew they had them was because we could not detect them. Yes, people who think like this not only are allowed to run around freely but become President.
The stupid thing that Bush keeps saying to justify attacking iran, is that the NIE says that Iran “did” have a nuclear weapons program but that they suspended it in 2003 and since they “did” have one, they could easily start it up again….okay,
but then he says…so the world must not allow them to have the “know how” or the “knowledge” to have a nuclear weapons program…well, idjiot…if they already had one and they already suspended it, they already know how to have one. Bonehead.
Funny I just got a reply from Casey on the same subject. He referred it to his appropriate staffer. When I called and asked to speak with the appropriate staffer, that wasn’t possible.
This is not snark. Why has the MSM completely ignored the depleted uranium story over the last several years?
It’s a topic that even the more adventurous investigative reporters seem to have shied away from.
Well Moondancer I’m just shocked ,shocked I tell you.
The lack of nuance in Melissa bean is representative of the terrible quality in both the House and the Senate. One symptom of why the Democrats vote precisely as Bush and Gillespie dictate to them to vote.
DFH filter set on HIGH.
Bean is a Repub:
http://projects.washingtonpost…..nst-party/
Bean: “IAEA? oops, my bad, I was looking at the IKEA enrichment catalog…”
With only the town of Windsor yet to report, there were 287,821 Democratic ballots cast and 238,850 Republican ones.
NH’s record turnout.
-G
Bean looks kinda dumb and clueless in that picture.
Wow. That is a damning list.
Meet Randi, Bean’s primary challenger!
I’ ll tell you why MSM( A.K.A. military industrial complex media outlet) ignores this because we”ve dumped over 1800 tons of this shit over there and if the G.I. and the blackwaters find out they signed up for cancer in ten years them that think would figure out the sign up bonus’ wasn’t enough. Birth defects are up 600% in Iraq since we have introduced Depleted uranium there.Is this a great country or what?
Go Randi, Go Randi!!
Fixed one small bit. You included one word that never is appropriate in a sentence about Bush.
They don’t care, because Brittany isn’t anywhere in the story.
Bean looks kinda dumb and clueless in that picture.
Almost like a young Laura Welch, just itchin’ to run over an ex-boyfriend…
To LS may be we could get someone to make Brittany a depleted uranium tiara then it would be tops the news.
[Mod Note; not that we wish any harm to Brittany, right?]
OT – 6 Troops killed today in Iraq
Coming late to the party….
Have you seen Msr Hulot’s Holiday? Jaques Tati at his best although my spouse counts Mon Oncle as one of her all time favorites.
I have nothing good to say about the DLC and look forward to the time when we can take back the darn party.
I dunno for sure, but I wouldn’t think it’s much harder to build a powerplant than it is a bomb. And it doesn’t require as much enrichment of the uranium. (I’ve been in a nuclear powerplant. It was impressive, if for no other reason than the wall thickness. No, it wasn’t fueled at the time.) And the Iranians are as intelligent as we are.
Damn did I miss some Britney news today?
MCain’s surge is making Iraq safe for former Saddamists, bitter enders and the worst of the worst to get American tax dollars and weapons.
-G
I see nothing wrong with Iran, or anyone else for that matter, trying to get off the oil cart but I am not so sure I like Nuke power. Wind seems to be getting some traction in the UK as a power source I guess we will have to wait here until we can start getting tax breaks to get off the oil habit.. Don’t see that happening anytime soon though.
Need voting process we can trust to get the candidates we fund. This from the NYT Sunday magazine on voting machines. I’tt take the paper counting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01…..ote-t.html
Wow I feel so much better.
Dam She would get my vote! But shit I live in Cali… Wishing her the best of luck!!We need more Dems like that!
Oh, she’s been assured by DOD that there is no proof that depleted uranium tiaras are harmful to anyone.
Bob in HI
In this house we have been talking about doing the absentee ballot thing.
OT – 6 Troops killed today in Iraq
This shit is never off topic.
This…is all over the web:
http://gawker.com/342314/memo-…..a-big-deal
Point taken.
Attention Pervert Dick Morris, breaking news.
Hillary Clinton wins NH primary, stock market surges by 130 points.
Suck it you loser.
-G
My brother offered Mr. Bean’s Holiday as a treat to watch on New Year’s Eve. Mr. Bean has a Nixon shadow in overdrive, is totally clueless, and also totally self-absorbed. Peter Sellers was funny; But Mr. Bean is not the least bit funny to me. I couldn’t stand it. I guess millions of Brits can be wrong.
Bob in HI
more senseless killing. This madness must stop. I would rather have someone in the White House that cries than lies.
Let’s see now, Phoenix…this lady thinks that Iran doesn’t have the right to peaceful nuclear power, because it might lead to enrichment. Is she saying that nothing’s off the table to stop that?
Because, near as I remember, she and Hillary seem to be of a mind about this issue. :o)
And there’s that little thingy about Clinton wanting to hand bush the go-ahead to “do” Iran, via the Kyle-Lieberman amendment.
Since Hillary’s running for PREZNINT, maybe we should be sending bucks to HER opponents.
Wait…a lot of us are already doing that. :o)
No Mr Bean was not particularly funny and I was brought up in england. Only one scene, the opera singing, was funny to me.
So now these fucking morons have stretched the troop deployments and armed and reconnoitered with the elements who may start fighting US troops in earnest again.
Petreaus should have called victory in November and started winding it back quickly.
If this continues the US is going to be in some seriously bad shape and the soldiers will once again suffer for the whims of the politicians.
-G
Solar on top of big city buildings provides unlimited energy and cool the air inversion from relexive heat. Here is a link. GE Capital is financing this energy model and has a package that can be and is replicated since 2006. I say boost this private program with a tax credit progrm to match. Huge demand can be taken of off the grid making the grid retrofit far less capital intensive. Since most office demand is in daylight and energy storage cells will carry the nightime demand when residence demand is up. Any thought on this solution?
The surge is working. Crazy John McCain said we are winning now that McCain’strategerie is being followed. To the six dead Americans, Crazy says “Thank you for your service” (and Halliburton thanks you).
Check out Scientific American January 2008! Great article on Solar power, if done right we can extricate ourselves from foreign oil and reduce our carbon foot print!! I have been looking into a system for our house but it is still a bit too expensive for our budget! This is a new company in the Silicone Valley here that is using a new novel method to make the panels. They are in early production now and their first year run is already sold out.
Check out their web site: http://www.nanosolar.com/
I hope that soon the price will make it affordable for us to easily afford it. Oh and the panels are flexible, meaning they can be used in many more ways than the ridged ones that most are familiar with! It is worth the moment to check them out.
I love Mr. Bean. The show where he is in church and badly need a handkerchief is the funniest thing I have ever seen.
Sounds super to me. If I could get tax breaks I would be off the grid in a flash as I am ideally suited to solar and wind. As it is now I just cannot afford it.
Isn’t she great? There was a terrific Blue America chat with her as well.
I met Randi at YearlyKos in Chicago and she is the real deal. My fiance and I had hotdogs and potato salad with her at the Teamsters’ picnic. Her story about her son who served in Irak is heartbreaking, as are all mothers’ stories whose children have been damaged by our occupation. On ALL the issues, Randi is right where you’d want your candidate to be.
She is exactly what we are looking for, yearning for, and hoping for when we say we seek more and better Democrats.
Please help Randi if you can!
OT
I just did one of those online surveys from some polling outfit and they seemed to be road testing ideas for VP selections. The choices were: Edwards, Kerry, Gore, Schumer, Richardson, and Biden, with a particular focus on Biden.
Frank@33:
How about a simple question for Clinton?
Team Troll, except for Paul, is saying that we’re winning in Iraq. (John McCain is practically shreiking it.)
Is it okay with all the people waving pom-pons for her, if we ask her if she agrees with them?
Or will that make us insensitive sexist pigs?
Sorry, that was Hillary Clinton poll, all about her and then the VP stuff, though they never said it was about choosing a VP
Mr Bean, the show, good. Mr Bean’s Holiday, the movie, not so good. Spouse and I both enjoy Bean the show.
No one has ever said here that asking a question on the issues is forbidden. The problem is when folks abandon the issues and make claims about HRC (or any other candidate) that are purely using her gender as the absolute reason that she is unfit to be elected to an office.
My day is made. I have been suffering from a slight depression after our primary day here in NH but now I am uplifted and can rest easy.
Hello everybody! Sorry I’m late. Anything exciting happening?
I’m in her district. How did you do the email? Is this how the “digg” works? I’ll be happy to email this along and let all of you know what response I receive.
same as it ever was
Just fond a link for the article in Scientific American on “A Solar Grand Plan” Well worth the read!
gulf of tonkin. hold on to your horses, here we go.
If Clusterfuck’s gonna keep Iranians from having the KNOWLEDGE to enrich uranium- he’s gonna gave to cut off their heads- cause they already KNOW how to do it. Apparently when one has an adequate supply of properly enriched material- the making the bomb part is relatively trivial- so what’s he sayin? Off with their heads?
The entire ME is a GREAT place to focus on photovoltaics and solar-furnace-based power. That with wind would be quite a good thing, but there are technical bragging rights, like it or not, for a country to have the nuclear power capability, and I am not opposed to any country deciding that is what they wish to do so long as the waste is handled responsibly (France seems to deal with it quite well, thank you, compared to the US).
Breaking news from RawStory. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is protecting child sexual predators.
Russians have agreed to supply Iran with enriched uranium. Is Clusterfuck OK with that?
especially if they plan to “take life”.
daKine; I didn’t ask if it was forbidden; I asked if asking her if, just like McCain and Willard and Giuliani, she thought we were winning in Iraq, would make us insensitive sexist pigs.
Which is what has been tossed by some people on here who clearly don’t want her track record, especially on Iraq, put up for discussion.
My 9 year old gave it to me and we watch it together. Remember Blackadder?
blackadder
BTW, according to AW.Com, over the past two days, 9 american servicemen have been killed.
OT Supreme court leaning towards up holdning Indiana’s voter Id law. From Raw story:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/….._0109.html
We need to Impeach all these Rethuglian justices Yes it can be done!!
Stopping nuclear proliferation is a noble goal that I applaud. It may be necessary to issue threats in order to get the job done- I’m OK with that- but this idiot in the White House can’t be trusted to deliver a Pizza- let alone a credible message.
As you note.
Not only is there anybody In there….is there anybody Out there…?
This is where she is http://www.house.gov/bean/. I can’t seem to figure out how to do the Digg thing, but what I did was copy the http://etc up top then went to the page icon on the icon bar up top and hit copy and then I sent her the link. Someone else could maybe give us a primer on using Digg.
Mommybrain,
Blackadder is way, way funnier than Mr Bean IMHO.
“his horse is blacker than a hole, his pot is blacker than his kettle…”
FunnyDiva
I have a cunning plan!
If Bush inhaled nose candy but doesn’t anymore (heh heh) but has knowledge of nose candy, we should arrest him.
Good News here in Iowa. We have a progressive challenging our Bush Dog, Leonard Boswell. Ed Fallon has filed papers to run against boswell. Here is a link to Democratic Underground.
Looks like his website is still under construction. I sent an email to the campaign to find out how I can contribute.
OT:
On finance. Also on folks like Fox and what a country is to do when mutli-nationals can do things like have Fox “test” USA security by trying to smuggle a dirty bomb in a port or Times Square.
From RGE mon:
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog…..adcomments
@ alexcanuck
Index composition and methodology are proprietary to those who compile and publish the index.
From the Wikipedia on weighting of stock indexes. All the terms are defined in the wiki through links if you click through:
“An index may also be classified according to the method used to determine its price. In a Price-weighted index such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the NYSE ARCA Tech 100 Index, the price of each component stock is the only consideration when determining the value of the index. Thus, price movement of even a single security will heavily influence the value of the index even though the dollar shift is less significant in a relatively highly valued issue, and moreover ignoring the relative size of the company as a whole. In contrast, a market-value weighted or capitalization-weighted index such as the Hang Seng Index factors in the size of the company. Thus, a relatively small shift in the price of a large company will heavily influence the value of the index. In a market-share weighted index, price is weighted relative to the number of shares, rather than their total value.
Traditionally, capitalization- or share-weighted indexes all had a full weighting i.e. all outstanding shares were included. Recently, many of them have changed to a float-adjusted weighting which helps indexing.”
It has occurred to me, perhaps unjustly, that one reason why Murdoch might want to own the Wall Street Journal is so that he could do to the Dow Jones indexes what he has done to news at FOX – distort reality to bend perception to his masters’ political advantage. Because the methodologies are proprietary, he could massively distort public perceptions by changing the methodology. As so many derivatives are based on the indices, there may be huge amounts of money at stake, making manipulation very tempting for someone with the power and inclination to do great evil.
Written by London Banker on 2008-01-09 09:50:59
London Banker: thanks for your thoughtful comments here. You set a standard for deep and intelligent commentary on this blog. Best Nouriel
Written by Nouriel on 2008-01-09 10:07:31
Yeah…forget Mr. Bean’s Holiday…but Blackadder’s Christmas’s Carol is not to be missed.
Yahoo reports the same.
Looks like a booby trapped house killed 6 today.
-G
Well, it also looks phony when we assist India, chide Pakistan and then threaten to obliterate Iran for the same or lesser infractions.
fyi, the Giuliani “threat” was “non-credible and non-specific“
But of course, since Rudy is a manly man, then no one can ever quesiton his manliness for running from this threat.
More life imitating art (Minority Report).
Soon, Uncle Sam will be able to arrest you for bad thoughts, and render you to a black hole in some third world county to make sure that you’re not a terrorist.
Bob in HI
He was not the least bit scared to be killed in nasty ways.
Did you know that on 9/11…
You know, I think that’s one of the things I can least forgive him for. That he turned a day of other peoples’ tragedies – tragedies he made worse – into something not much above a punchline.
I know it’s not an answer to your question, but I did a short blog on DU here
I really, really dislike Melissa Bean. And I hated this Administration’s handling of the Iranian nuclear program so much that I started my blog solely for that topic. So believe me it pains me to say this, but: the quoted part from Bean in the post is, technically, accurate. Iran does have a nuclear program (just not a nuclear weapons program), enrichment is in defiance of the international community (UNSC 1696; though there is some question as to whether the resolution is legal, given the NPT protections, there’s no doubt it expresses the will of the international community), and it is a key step in building an atomic weapon.
In a way, it’s all the worse that it’s accurate, because you can only come up with something that technically-accurate-but-generally-misleading if you’re really, really trying to get away with something.