Zoopolitik

Female Condom: Already Done

2009-03-12T20:06:11Z

A friend is enraged after reading "Female condom 2.0" at Salon. Here's the line that set her off:

While fantastic in theory -- what's not to love about a woman-controlled, non-hormonal pregnancy and STD prevention device? -- the female condom is not exactly a dream in practice.

The operative words, in this case, are female controlled. My friend's response?

"There already is a woman-controlled, non-hormonal pregnancy and STD prevention device on the market that is not 75-82 percent effective, but is 99 percent effective," she said. "It's called the male condom."

"While I'm sure Judy Berman is a lovely, educated woman," she continued, "once again she is putting the onus for birth control on women, not on men. Here's how the device works: 'Put this thing on, buster, or it isn't happening!'"

"That's what we need to teach our daughters," she concluded.

I humbly agree. Wrap it up, gentlemen.

Taking on CNBC's Soothsayers

2009-03-11T02:19:13Z

A number of bloggers have linked to Jon Stewart’s takedown of CNBC’s Jim Cramer. I won’t belabor the point here, save to say Matthew Yglesias’ post-video commentary is the best I've read:

I've made this analogy before, but CNBC and much of the rest of the financial media is just what you would have gotten if television existed back when entrail-reading was a popular method of forecasting the future. It's a national embarrassment that these people are taken seriously.

Is there anything else to say but "amen?"

Salon's Gabriel Winant wonders whether Cramer is really as bad as Jon Stewart says he is in "Why is Jim Cramer shouting at me?" His conclusion? All of CNBC is deluded:

In mistaking themselves for the country at large, and the bouncing of the market for the health of the economy as a whole, Cramer, Kudlow and the whole talking-head crew give the lie to Rick Santelli's assertion about a "silent majority." CNBC feels like bizarro world because, in an important sense, it is.

Later on Tuesday, Andrew Leonard adds insult to injury in his "How the World Works" blog, asking Cramer for an extension of his pretzel logic:

A report in the Wall Street Journal that the Treasury Department is discussing "contingency plans" for yet another Citigroup bailout seems good cause for more panic, rather than euphoria. And Bernanke's hint that mark-to-market accounting rules might need to be tweaked (although not "suspended") seems uncomfortably close to attempting to paper over the toxic asset nightmare with some bookkeeping sleight-of-hand. But for now, let's all tune in to CNBC, to see if Jim Cramer is preaching the new gospel of Obama. Because, you know, if investors are happy, the president must suddenly be doing a great job. Right?

I have just three words to add here concerning CNBC: They're all assholes.

"We Surround Them" (with Revolution Rhetoric)

2009-03-10T15:26:50Z

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It’s pretty clear to me that Glenn Beck and Chuck Norris have lost their minds. I understand Norris’ crackup. He’s old enough and has done enough reps on the cheap exercise machine he hawks in late-night informercials that he is finally confusing the characters he played on television and in the movies with reality. But Beck is clearly insane and needs serious professional help and lots of psychotropic pharmaceuticals.

Seriously. How far will Rupert Murdoch go for ratings? Would he genuinely risk the lives of innocents to prevent the collapse of his media empire? Let’s be clear: It doesn’t take much to legitimize violence in the minds of self-proclaimed “revolutionaries.” Let’s hope Beck and Murdoch don’t incite another Oklahoma City bombing.

Obama Lifts Stem Cell Research Restrictions

2009-03-09T22:42:48Z

President Barack Obama signed an executive order today lifting George W. Bush’s strict limits on stem cell research, saying the previous administration had forced “a false choice between sound science and moral values.”

In remarks made prior to the signing, Obama said he wanted “America to lead the world in the discoveries [stem cell research] one day may yield.” But this is the paragraph that hooked me:

Now, this order is an important step in advancing the cause of science in America. But let’s be clear: Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources — it’s also about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about letting scientists like those who are here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient — especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda — and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.

What? An administration driven by rational thought over religious dogma? Well, Toto, we aren’t in Kansas any more. The next thing you know the president will recommend the teaching of evolution over “intelligent design.”

Maybe I’ve set the bar of expectation awfully low following the rule of George W. Bush, but when the President of the United States talks about “protecting free and open inquiry” I get a little misty. Its eight-year exile sure was a long one.

Stiglitz Primer on Bank Nationalization

2009-03-09T18:41:30Z

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has written an essay for The Nation that may well be the clearest defense of bank nationalization I have yet read. I strongly urge you to click the link and read the entire piece, as I cannot begin to reduce all the information available to a single quote; still, for me, Stiglitz’ explanation of the difference between a large bank and the local pizza parlor was telling:

Banks differ in only one respect. The failure of a bank results in particular hardship to depositors and can lead to broader problems in the economy. These are among the reasons that the government has provided deposit insurance. But this means that when banks fail, the government comes in to pick up the pieces—and this is different from when the local pizza parlor fails. Worse still, long experience has taught us that when banks are at risk of failure, their managers engage in behaviors that risk losing even more taxpayer money. They may, for instance, undertake big bets: if they win, they keep the proceeds; if they lose, so what?—they would have died anyway. That’s why we have laws that say when a bank’s capital is low, it should be shut down. We don’t wait for the till to be empty. Because the government is on the hook for so much money, it has to take an active role in managing the restructuring; even in the case of airline bankruptcy, courts typically appoint someone to oversee the restructuring to make sure that the claimants’ interests are served.

Those who argue that banks should simply be left to collapse may be short-sighted, but their arguments are at least as sound as those who insist we should open a monetary vein and hemorrhage away our nation’s treasure. As Stiglitz explains, drawing on another economic discipline, such a program rewards bad practice:

There is a basic principle in environmental economics called “the polluter pays”: polluters must pay for the cost of cleaning up their pollution. American banks have polluted the global economy with toxic waste; it is a matter of equity and efficiency that they must be forced, now or later, to pay the price of cleaning it up. As long as the banking sector feels that it will be bailed out of disasters—even ones it created—we will continue to have a moral hazard. Only by making sure that the sector pays the costs of its actions will efficiency be restored.

U.S. taxpayers are, in a sense, already part owners in failed financial corporations. Consider insurer AIG. After warning of “a ‘catastrophic’ collapse that would be worse for markets than the demise of Lehman Brothers” in February, the financial behemoth got assurance of another $30 billion in equity from the federal government. This is in addition to the $150 billion already transfused under the previous (supposedly conservative) administration.

It mystifies me that taxpayers agree to such massive investments without demanding an equity stake in the corporation. In my vision of nationalization, companies would not only be taken over, restructured, and placed on the auction block, but taxpayers would become shareholders in them. Once the federal government took over an institution and cleaned it up, it would issue one share of stock per dollar of federal money invested and distribute 49 percent of the shares to everyone who filed a tax return in 2008. It would then transfer the remaining 51 percent of shares to the company or companies purchasing the pared-down bank. Then we’d all have a stake in the success or failure of the newly organized company.

Those insisting this is “socialism” (as though socialism is an ill right-thinking people should dread) fail to recognize that government has already become financial institutions’ lender of choice — a practice that began not with “liberal” Barack Obama, but with “conservative” George W. Bush in another example of corporate welfare. Calling for an equity stake in bailed-out financial institutions — and for an equity stake that benefits ordinary taxpayers — is not only better use of the treasury, it’s better business.

Obama's War on the Establishment

2009-03-02T20:43:34Z

Every word of Daniel Froomkin’s “Obama vs. the Washington Establishment” for The Washington Post bears reading; but for me, the following paragraphs were telling:

After all, since the Reagan era, even mainstream Democratic leaders have internalized the trickle-down, free-market, small-government mentality which Obama now blames for our woes. Few in the Democratic party — or the mainstream media — did much more than watch as the economic playing field tilted further and further to the advantage of the rich.

And yes, it’s true that many of Obama’s initiatives could well be described as pent-up Democratic goals. But you might also call them nearly-forgotten goals, as far as the current batch of Democratic leaders is concerned. Even when they controlled Congress, they failed to block budgets that turned out to be blueprints for disaster. And they either didn’t fight for their principles or flinched in a pinch. I described some of their capitulations to former president George W. Bush in this December 2007 column. These very same leaders may well be motivated to — at least — complicate or modify Obama’s proposals to validate their own previous inaction.

As I have said a multitude of times (and once illustrated to the debasement of my career), trickle-down economics is simply the very rich standing atop the mountain of humanity and urinating a shower down on the rest of us. Whatever trickles down is the only gold we get to keep. At this moment the system is hard at work using existent and nonexistent taxpayer dollars to reward the bad behavior of irresponsible greedheads. And this is the system the Washington establishment wants to continue. Before we hang the onus of obfuscation on Republicans alone, a great many Democrats — especially those lashed to the apron strings of the financial community — are equally culpable.

Unless working class voters rise up as a community and back Barack Obama’s defense of them, he simply will not survive, and the very same piggish thugs and robber barons who got us here will continue feeding at a trough sustained by workers.

Class war? Bring it on. For once I’d like to see ordinary Americans on the winning side.

Merkel Nixes E. European Bailout

2009-03-01T17:13:16Z

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Some years ago I recall Scottish comedian Billy Connolly, after delivering a hilarious stand-up routine in an HBO special, warning somewhat seriously that Europe’s biggest concern wasn’t whether North and South Vietnam got back together, but whether East and West Germany did. “Ye’ve got to watch those bastarrrds,” he cautioned, wagging a stern finger in the direction of the camera.

I was reminded of it this morning, after reading that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has blocked a bailout of eastern Europe at an emergency summit in Brussels.

Germany rejected appeals Sunday for a single multibillion euro (dollar) bailout of eastern Europe, even after Hungary begged EU leaders not to let a new ”Iron Curtain” divide the continent into rich and poor.

The swift, strong comments by German Chancellor Angela Merkel dampened hopes that leaders at Sunday’s European Union summit could forge a unified stance to tackle the worsening economic crisis.

As Europe’s largest economy, Germany has been under rising pressure to take the lead in rescuing eastern EU members, but Merkel insisted that a one-size-fits-all bailout was unwise.

I have no horse in the race, so I am neither lauding nor commending Merkel’s position. I do find it interesting that when it comes to their own pocketbooks, even left-leaning nations have a problem “spreading the wealth around.”

NSOTU Reactions

2009-02-25T18:07:16Z

The New York Times blog, “The Opinionator,” has a wrap-up of reactions to Barack Obama’s speech last night in “The Critics on Obama’s Opening Night.” Dan Froomkin has other sources, including the loathsome, completely irrelevant ass William Kristol. Here are a few from my reading list:

Matthew Yglesias is still unconvinced:

Obama’s plan for the economy is a three-legged stool—stimulus, housing, banking—but the banking leg is the most important one and it’s also the one on which the administration has been least convincing. I saw a poll showing that 80+ percent of the public feels more optimistic after Obama’s speech. I’ll feel more optimistic when I see a convincing plan for the financial sector.

I’d second that, by the way. One that includes the temporary nationalization of Citigroup and Bank of America.

Steve Benen is more upbeat:

The president wasn’t apologetic about his use of government, it was just a matter of fact. These are times that demand an ambitious federal response and Obama is going to deliver one. We tried pretending that the government is a tool to be mistrusted and used sparingly, and now we’re going to try something different.

Alex Massie calls it “The Age of Obama”:

For better or for worse, this is Obama’s time now. I think he senses that he can be Reagan’s mirror-image: a President who rolls up the political map and draws a new one, redefining an era in his own image. It’s early days yet, but that’s the level of ambition he’s working at. And right now it seems as though the lights of Republicanism are going out and it may be some time yet before we see them again.

It always spooks me when pundits start counting out the Republicans; cockroaches don’t die easy, and they have an uncanny ability to come back in superior numbers, immune to the poison that did away with them earlier.

Josh Marshall live-blogged the event, offering this:

This point about honest budget accounting sounds very wonky. And it is in a lot of ways. But the Obama people are very big on it. It’s actually amazing how much stuff was not included in the Bush era budgeting. Cost of Iraq and Afghanistan for the next 6 or 7 years? Hard to say. So just don’t count it, etc.

Mickey Kaus surprised me:

In general, the speech had its usual effect on me, only amplified this year — which was to make me hate all the senators and representative gathered in the House to unctuously pretend on camera that they’re supportive of the President. They’re not the people who are going to help him succeed. They are the people who are going to conspire, probably successfully, to prevent him from succeeding. That goes for Pelosi’s Democratic troops — who’ll oppose education and entitlement reforms, who’ll oppose ending “programs that don’t work,” who’ve already polluted the stimulus with bureaucracy-building measures — as well as Boehner’s troops who will just oppose.

Digby is glad the new kid’s in town:

And, once again, I’m struck by just how relieved I am. I can’t even imagine the despair we would be feeling if the last regime were still in charge during these troubled times. (Just remembering the glowering visage of Dick Cheney sitting there is enough to send shivers down my spine.) It’s like fate intervened (or just random luck) at the last possible moment. Even the Republicans seem to be letting out a deep breath….

That sentiment was echoed in a tweet by Robb Lejuwaan:

So this is what it’s like to have a true leader as our president — amazing.

On the flip side, Jim McCormick tweeted this about Bobby Jindal’s Non-Response to the Not the State of the Union Address:

Oh. No. Bobby Jindal sounds like he’s a librarian reading to school children. I think the authors at Little Golden Books wrote his speech.

Funny on first read, but even funnier when Nate Silver live-blogged at 10:29:

If it sounds like Jindal is targeting his speech to a room full of fourth graders, that’s because he is. They might be the next people to actually vote for Republicans again.

(In fairness to Jim I should probably add that he is a Republican who likely agreed with a good deal of what Jindal had to say, though I cannot speak for him.)

Silver has a sharp post about the volcano monitoring Jindal criticized last night. (Ken Rudin at NPR has more.)

Finally, Paul Krugman wonders what Jindal was thinking:

And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.

The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.

Netanyahu on a Dare

2009-02-25T01:09:32Z

Earlier today a friend sent a link to Juan Cole’s “Netanyahu: Train Wreck for Israel, Middle East; Looming Disaster for United States,” daring me to publish a link to the story and all the links Cole provided.

Republishing the links is redundant; it is easy enough to follow them on Informed Comment. I’m not sure I endorse all of them. When it comes to the Middle East, there is plenty of blame to spread around. While I am deeply concerned that the Palestinians are not marginalized, displaced from their homes, or murdered, I also care that Israelis live at peace, secure in a two-state world. There are impediments to such a vision on both sides of the conflict, and I am critical of any solution lacking such a balance.

Still, it is difficult to muster sympathy for the leader of any nation who believes he can “harness” the United States or the will of its people. I, for one, have not read anything in the United States Constitution mentioning our subservient position as a satellite of Netanyahu’s Israel.

Irony of the Day: No Nationalization

2009-02-24T20:51:31Z

Like a decrepit robber baron on a Viagra mainline, the market sprung up today after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reassured investors that the government would not nationalize banks. Bank of America stock sported an 18 percent erection, and the Dow as a whole was up 2 percent at 2:30 today.

At almost the same time bank analysts and industry insiders predicted the rate of U.S. bank failures would increase more than four-fold this year, with FDIC spokesman Andrew Gray announcing, “The FDIC has clearly stated that we expect an increase in our resolution activity as we work through this economic cycle.”

RBC Capital Markets’ predictions are grimmer: They believe more than 1,000 banks — or one in eight lenders — may fail in the next three to five years, a figure far greater than the more conservative posited by bank analysts.

Reuters notes, “Declaring a bank failure sooner rather than later often minimizes taxpayer costs.”

Hmm. I suppose the rule only applies if your name isn’t Citigroup or Bank of America. In those cases, taxpayers be damned.

I’m a little late to Paul Krugman’s latest op-ed for The New York Times, but it bears reading: “Banking on the Brink.” I have no reason to think he might be, but I’m hoping he is wrong.

Health Reform Key to Fiscal Well-Being

2009-02-24T18:49:30Z

Ezra Klein has a bit of advice for progressives fretting over today’s “White House Fiscal Summit”: Don’t sweat it. Of all the items on the table in the discussions, entitlement reform is conspicuously missing.

Its absence is the product of a quiet but powerful change in thinking that has taken place in the offices of elite Washington and, now, the halls of the White House. Where a decade ago the looming fiscal threat of entitlement spending led economists and budget wonks to wear out their worry beads, today a more subtle understanding of our fiscal future dominates. In this telling, there’s no such program as SocialSecurityandMedicareandMedicaid. There’s Social Security, which has modest long-term liabilities and needs little, if any, help. And then there’s health-care reform. “That,” says Henry Aaron, a senior economist at the Brookings Institution, “is the big kahuna.”

How this happened depends on whom you talk to. Dean Baker, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, points to the 2005 Social Security privatization fight. “A lot of people were suddenly out there arguing that there’s no crisis and we don’t need to do anything on Social Security,” he says. That forced left-of-center wonks who’d not thought much about the crisis to confront the numbers or, more precisely, the graphs. “We’ve done a graphic that shows what deficits look like in every country with longer life expectancies than us and what the deficit looks like going 70 years with the same per-capita health-care costs of that country.”

The ensuing graph — consider it our chart-of-the-day — has the United States budget soaring to 55 percent of GDP with out-of-control health care costs, while reform brings it to slightly more than 5 percent. The clincher? In countries with government subsidized healthcare, including Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, GDP is greater than the deficit.

As a slide in OMB director Robert Orszag’s arsenal shows, Social Security isn’t the issue; the cost of Medicare and Medicaid is — and only because health care costs are spiraling out of control.

Klein sums up: In Obama’s Washington, Fiscal responsibility means health reform.

Is the Nation in Denial?

2009-02-22T19:02:53Z

It came as no surprise when an editorial in The New York Times called for the nationalization of institutions like Citigroup and Bank of America. One might expect the journal erroneously considered a “lefty” newspaper by those on the right to endorse the measure.

But when Republicans like Lindsey Graham and John McCain start slipping the N-word into conversation, it’s time to face uncomfortable facts. As Graham put it, “I would argue that we cannot be ideologically a little bit pregnant. It doesn’t matter what you call it, but we can’t keep on funding these zombie banks. That’s what the Japanese did.”

Now that the so-called “high priest of lassier-faire capitalism,” Alan Greenspan, admits nationalization is in order (“It may be necessary to temporarily nationalize some banks in order to facilitate a swift and orderly restructuring,” Greenspan said. “I understand that once in a hundred years this is what you do.”), one wonders why President Barack Obama’s administration is slow to pick up the tempo.

In his regular op-ed column for The New York Times, Frank Rich suggests a reason: We don’t want to know the truth.

The Obama White House may come up with euphemisms for nationalization (temporary receivership, anyone?). But whatever it’s called, what will it mean? The reason why the White House has been punting on the new installment of the bank rescue is not that the much-maligned Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, is incapable of getting his act together. What’s slowing the works are the huge political questions at stake, many of them with consequences potentially as toxic as the banks’ assets.

Will Obama concede aloud that some of our “too big to fail” banks have, in essence, already failed? If so, what will he do about it? What will it cost? And, most important, who will pay? No one knows the sum of the American banks’ losses, but the economist Nouriel Roubini, who has gotten much right about this crash, puts it at $1.8 trillion. That doesn’t count any defaults still to come on what had been considered “good” mortgages and myriad other debt, whether from auto loans or credit cards.

When Obama sought support for his stimulus package, he appealed to Republicans to put away partisan politics and do what was good for the nation: none answered the call. I would suggest it is time for Obama to follow his own advice, forget what is politically expedient, and nationalize toxic banks.

Whale Watching Profit Spurs Recklessness

2009-02-22T15:51:01Z

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Via NatHistoryWhale at the Museum of Natural History comes a story in the Sri Lanka Sunday Times “Plus” section entitled, “What are we doing to these gentle mammals of the sea?” I couldn’t help thinking, as I read the account of a stampeded baleen whale robbed of a complete breath, of waterboarding:

>On the first day, we found a baleen whale being completely surrounded by whale watch boats and being chased at high speed every time it surfaced to breathe. There were a total of five whale watch boats around it of which only one (the large boat operated by the Ceylon Fisheries Harbour Cooperation in collaboration with Walkers Tours) was operating in a professional and correct manner that did not unduly stress the whale and also provided safety for the whale watchers on board. Their caution and correct conduct should be commended and held up as an example of how to do it right. All the other commercial whale watch boats, regardless of their size and who was operating them, were harassing the whale throughout this encounter making it change its natural behaviour due to the stress they were causing it. Large baleen whales usually surface after a dive and blow slowly and deliberately at the surface while they rest and exhale.

>They blow many times to replenish much of the air in their lungs to dive again. Once they have done this they will slowly dive once more to feed. Unfortunately the whale watch boats went charging towards the whale every time it surfaced, forcing it to hurriedly take a few breaths and re-submerge before it was ready for another dive. By doing this the boats were causing much physical stress to the animal while also making sure that the whale watchers who pay a large sum for these expeditions got only fleeting views of the whale. If like the large CFHC vessel all the boats just lower their speed and idle at a safe distance it is possible to watch these animals for a long time as they will spend more time at the surface affording whale watchers long and memorable experiences and many good photo opportunities.

Later in the story a blue whale and her calf are harassed as they feed. It left me wondering how news accounts would read if the mother, fearing for the well-being of her child, turned and charged the boat, spilling its occupants into the ocean. I’m willing to bet the whale would get the blame and be called a “rogue” or a “renegade.”

As writer Anouk Ilangakoon reminds readers, responsible whale watching might prove a boon to southern Sri Lanka’s economy, but recklessness in the burgeoning industry could stem its growth before it reaches maturity.

Advice to Obama: Bite the Bullet

2009-02-20T22:44:25Z

Apparently Wall Street isn’t buying into the Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner hybrid approach to bank rescue. Here is Reuters’ lead:

Bank of America Corp and Citigroup Inc shares plummeted for the sixth straight day on Friday, hammered by fears the U.S. government could nationalize the banks, wiping out shareholders.

The shares came off their lows after the White House said President Barack Obama favored a privately held banking system, but investor concerns persisted.

The New York Times says reassurances from the White House rallied the markets late in the day:

Wall Street’s fears about a government takeover of major banks eased somewhat on Friday afternoon after the White House reaffirmed its belief in a privately owned banking system.

The Dow climbed back from a 200-point loss but still ended 100 points lower after the Obama administration tried to reassure nervous investors that it wanted to avoid nationalizing troubled banks.

‘This administration continues to strongly believe that a privately held banking system is the correct way to go, ensuring that they are regulated sufficiently by this government,”” a spokesman for President Obama, Robert Gibbs, said. “That’s been our belief for quite some time, and we continue to have that.”

The Washington Post calls the market’s response “erratic.”

Lurching ups and downs are great for roller coaster enthusiasts, but lousy for investors and the public. The Obama administration should take a stand one way or another and let the resulting storm play out. Uncertainty worries people more than bold action. Personally, I believe it is past time to temporarily nationalize banks, sell off the pieces, and move ahead. Sometimes those who play the market lose their backsides; it’s part of the risk they take to win big.

But regardless of the course of action, the time has come to say “yes, we will” or “no, we won’t” and get on with it. At least then we’ll all know where we stand.

As I used to tell customers when I worked in sales, “Sooner or later you have to decide. You’re either in or out. Stop wasting our time and choose.”

Bush Shoe Thrower Defends His Action

2009-02-20T20:55:09Z

In case you’ve forgotten Muntadar al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who became a hero to Arabs on the street after he hurled his shoes at then-President George W. Bush, he got his day in court on Thursday. Appearing before judge Abdul Amir al-Rubaie, he defended his behavior, saying Bush was not an “official” guest of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. “Guests should knock on the door,” he insisted. “Those who come sneaking in are not guests.” About an hour later the judge postponed the proceeding until March 12 “to seek an opinion from the Iraqi government about whether Bush’s final visit to Baghdad was indeed an ‘official’ one.”

Following his courtroom appearance, Zaidi spoke with reporters and explained what led him to strike out:

During the news conference, Zaidi said, he became enraged as Bush provided an upbeat assessment of the security situation. “I did not know what achievements he was talking about,” Zaidi said. “I was seeing a million martyrs, seas of Iraqi blood, the desecration of mosques, the raping of Iraqi women and the humiliation Iraqis endure every day, every hour. Because I am a journalist, I know all about that.”

Bush smirked “icily” as he spoke, Zaidi said, and flashed a “smile with no spirit.” As the news conference was winding down and the two heads of state were preparing to dine together, Zaidi said he was overtaken by rage.

“In that moment, I only saw Bush,” he said. “I was feeling the blood of innocent people flow under my feet as he was smiling. I felt that he is the killer of my people, and I am one of those people. I became emotional because he’s responsible for what is going on in Iraq, so I hit him with my shoe.”

The journalist’s initial account of the incident was taken under duress, as he received electric shocks, he said.

A crowd of Iraqis applauded as Zaidi was taken from the hearing and returned to jail.

Zoopolitik

Female Condom: Already Done

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Taking on CNBC's Soothsayers

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"We Surround Them" (with Revolution Rhetoric)

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Obama Lifts Stem Cell Research Restrictions

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Stiglitz Primer on Bank Nationalization

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Obama's War on the Establishment

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Merkel Nixes E. European Bailout

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NSOTU Reactions

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Netanyahu on a Dare

Irony of the Day: No Nationalization

Health Reform Key to Fiscal Well-Being

Is the Nation in Denial?

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Whale Watching Profit Spurs Recklessness

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Advice to Obama: Bite the Bullet

Bush Shoe Thrower Defends His Action

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