The gravest questions of fiscal responsibility for the nation are being ignored in the freakish sideshow now under way in Congress over yet another tax cut in these fiscally difficult times. President Bush and the Republican leaders should be candidly debating the $2 trillion-plus mountain of deficits and debt they are rolling onto the backs of future generations through the administration's serial tax cuts. Instead, they are obsessed with the 2004 election cycle, wrangling over how best to throw a last-minute bone to low-income Americans shortchanged in last month's tax giveaway to the most affluent Americans.
The Bush cuts offer too little short-term stimulus while choking the long-term revenue flow for the looming time when Social Security and Medicare costs will balloon. Mr. Bush's growing need to float the federal government on borrowed money will crimp economic growth. This is the stuff of real debate. Instead we have the G.O.P. worrying a modest share for the poor. The outcome promises to position the president as a compassionate "moderate" in a cynical bit of right-wing theater produced by the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, the president's indispensable ally in budget politicking.
The Times brain trust does not seem to realize that "candid debate" is not an option right now, even if aWol didn't lie like a rug; this is no longer "business as usual."
They seem to think that "choking the long-term revenue flow" that enables the government to "promote the general welfare" (Preamble, US Constitution) is some sort of accident.
It isn't; it's the plan. The Thugs are out to trash the New Deal and loot what they can, now, because they can.
Posted by Lambert
Obviously, it's good news when theocratic thugs are brought under the rule of law, instead of acting with impunity. Here:
TEHRAN (AP) - Iranian police arrested dozens of pro-clergy militants Saturday who smashed their way into university dormitories and beat up sleeping students in a wave of violence aimed at putting down protests against Iran's Islamic government.
The militants, who pledge allegiance to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, usually act with impunity, breaking up demonstrations and punishing protesters.
An official British investigation into two trailers found in northern Iraq has concluded they are not mobile germ warfare labs, as was claimed by Tony Blair and President George Bush, but were for the production of hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as the Iraqis have continued to insist.
The conclusion by biological weapons experts working for the British Government is an embarrassment for the Prime Minister, who has claimed that the discovery of the labs proved that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction and justified the case for going to war against Saddam Hussein.
Instead, a British scientist and biological weapons expert, who has examined the trailers in Iraq, told The Observer last week: 'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories. You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were - facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.'
The revelation that the mobile labs were to produce hydrogen for artillery balloons will also cause discomfort for the British authorities because the Iraqi army's original system was sold to it by the British company, Marconi Command & Control.
Posted by Lambert
We've been posting so vociferously that the farmer's brilliant "bump-monkey pox" post might be missed.
Both bump-monkey pox and Limbaughian dung swine fever often exhibit the following symptoms:
...
#17- The dreaded CAPS-LOCK disease!
Scroll down and read! Mix 'em, match 'em! Share 'em with your friends! It's important to structure the discourse to our advantage, and this the farmer does.
Posted by Lambert
Jack Epstein of the SF Chronicle writes:
Five leading U.S. humanitarian organizations have clashed with the Bush administration in recent weeks over the Pentagon's role in the rebuilding of Iraq, saying military oversight jeopardizes their work and puts aid workers at risk.
Late last month, IRC, CARE and WorldVision Inc. all declined to participate in a $35 million program to rebuild schools and health clinics administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, a State Department agency that in Iraq reports to an authority established by the Pentagon.
Kevin Henry, CARE's advocacy director, echoed Bartolini's concern, saying his organization turned down the offer to participate in the USAID initiative for fear of "losing our credibility and putting our staff at greater risk."
last week, Save the Children and Mercy Corps, a Portland humanitarian organization, objected to a demand that all contact with journalists be filtered through USAID in order to qualify for the same development program turned down by CARE, IRC and WorldVision.
The media restriction, which one NGO official called "unprecedented," was imposed soon after USAID Director Andrew Natsios told a forum of InterAction, the largest alliance of American humanitarian groups working overseas, that NGOs fulfilling U.S. contracts are "an arm of the U.S. government" and should do a better job highlighting ties to the Bush administration if they want to continue receiving funds for overseas projects.
According to an NGO executive who asked not to be named because his group is involved in dealings with USAID, "The Bush administration is having real problems in Iraq and doesn't like the bad press. They think NGOs are behind it, whispering into the ears of reporters."
Typical. Controlliing the message (to who? Us!) is more important than schools and food for children.
Meanwhile, the missionary NGOs are experiencing no such difficulties. From Robert Gee of the Austin American-Stateman:
For hundreds, perhaps thousands of American evangelical Christians, Iraq is fertile ground for humanitarian relief work -- and introducing Muslims to the story of Jesus.
It's great that the Iraqi people are being helped, whether by missionaries or not. On the other hand, it's not hard to imagine how some in this country would react to aid that came from the Red Crescent and included verses from the Koran.
Posted by Leah
I always hesitate to bring up Israel and the Palestinians; even this far away from the suicide bombings and the answering missiles, there seems to be a green line of sorts, across which those of us who care about this tragedy but have differing takes on it, can't hear one another.
But this story, unreported here, as far as I can tell, describes a development too stunning to be ignored.
Is Sharon to blame? Israelis wonder
PM's bid to kill Hamas leader condemned
It is a question rarely asked by Israel's Jews, and almost never in public. But yesterday one member of the Israeli parliament, Roman Bronfman, cautiously wondered if the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, did not have Jewish blood on his hands.
In carefully couched terms, he raised the question after the militant Islamic movement Hamas responded with its favorite weapon - the suicide bombing of civilians - to Israel's botched attempt to kill its political leader.
"It is necessary to examine government policy which may not have been helpful in progressing the "road map" and seems to have taken us back to death, pain and sorrow," Mr Bronfman said
The article goes on to describe the surprising array of Sharon critics, including twenty-five Israeli millitary officers, who were planning to sign an advertisement praising Sharon for embracing a Palestinian state and who now worry he hasn't.
Among those who initiated the advert was Brigadier-General Asher Levy, Mr Sharon's commanding officer in the 1948 independence war.
"We fought together and we were wounded together, so I know him well. We had a long conversation a year ago and I believed he had changed. Now I'm not sure," he said.
Most Americans have no idea of the range of opinion in Israel. And now there appears to be emerging the return of a willingness there, to take a look at the efficacy as well as the morality of pursuing security Sharon's way. (CNN seems to be reporting, in one of those crawls across the bottom of the screen, that a new poll shows sixty percent plus of Israelis think Sharon's actions played a role in provoking the Hamas attacks.)
Go read; it's a point of view you won't get on cable news.
Posted by Lambert
Here's word from the Brits on the fate of empires. And, after all, they had centuries of success doing it, even if we did escape, and later best them.
From Eric Hobsbawm: (I'm quoting far too much of it, I know, but an analytical perspective on what we are experiencing is so refreshing.)
America's imperial delusion The British empire was the only one [of Spain, Russia, Rome] that really was global in a sense that it operated across the entire planet. But the differences are stark. The British empire at its peak administered one quarter of the globe's surface. The US has never actually practised colonialism, except briefly at the beginning of the 20th century. It operated instead with dependent and satellite states and developed a policy of armed intervention in these.
The collapse of the Soviet Union left the US as the only superpower. The sudden emergence of a ruthless, antagonistic flaunting of US power is hard to understand, all the more so since it fits neither with long-tested imperial policies nor the interests of the US economy. But patently a public assertion of global supremacy by military force is what is in the minds of the people at present dominating policymaking in Washington.
Is it likely to be successful? The world is too complicated for any single state to dominate it. And with the exception of its superiority in hi-tech weaponry, the US is relying on diminishing assets. Its economy forms a diminishing share of the global economy, vulnerable in the short as well as long term. The US empire is beyond competition on the military side. That does not mean that it will be absolutely decisive, just because it is decisive in localised wars.
Iraq was a country that had been defeated by the Americans and refused to lie down. It happened to have oil, but the war was really an exercise in showing international power. The emptiness of administration policy is clear from the way the aims have been put forward in public relations terms.
Domestically, the real danger for a country that aims at world control is militarisation. Internationally, the danger is the destabilising of the world. The Middle East is far more unstable now than it was five years ago. US policy weakens all the alternative arrangements, formal and informal, for keeping order. In Europe it has wrecked Nato - not much of a loss, but trying to turn it into a world military police force for the US is a travesty. It has deliberately sabotaged the EU, and also aims at ruining another of the great world achievements since 1945: prosperous democratic social welfare states.
How long the present superiority of the Americans [will last] is impossible to say. The only thing of which we can be absolutely certain is that historically it will be a temporary phenomenon, as all other empires have been.
There are internal reasons, the most immediate being that most Americans are not interested in running the world. What they are interested in is what happens to them in the US. The weakness of the US economy is such that at some stage both the US government and electors will decide that it is much more important to concentrate on the economy than to carry on with foreign military adventures. Even by local business standards Bush does not have an adequate economic policy for the US. And Bush's existing international policy is not a particularly rational one for US imperial interests - and certainly not for the interests of US capitalism. Hence the divisions of opinion within the US government.
The key questions now are: what will the Americans do next, and how will other countries react?
Of course, as Keynes said, "in the long run, we're all dead." One thing we can be sure of is that by the time their delusions are exposed, aWol and all his cronies, Pioneers, and Rangers will be well ensconced in bunkers with sacks of cash.
Posted by Lambert
Mike Glover of AP writes: writes:
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said he's "throwing down a marker" with a $300,000 television ad campaign designed to set himself apart from the field of Democratic presidential candidates.
"My message is very clear: Democrats need to stand up and be proud to be Democrats again," he said.
"We're not being shy about this," said Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager. "We're not running a sit-back-and-watch campaign. We're being very aggressive, because that's what we think is needed to beat George Bush."
Personally, I'm a "yellow dog" Democrat--I'll vote for a yellow dog over any Republican. But one thing I like about Dean is that he's unafraid to take aWol on. Whether this resonates with the electorate remains to be seen.
Posted by Leah
From the Comments to Tresy's post, SullyWatch adds this important insight:
What's really funny about this is that AEI, the Federalist Society and all the other Scaife-spawn have had exactly the sort of effect on the US that they now fret about "NGOs" (and which NGOs are they talking about?) having on other countries.
To quote from their website:
NGOs have created their own rules and regulations and demanded that governments and corporations abide by those rules. Many nations’ legal systems encourage NGOs to use the courts-or the specter of the courts-to compel compliance. Politicians and corporate leaders are often forced to respond to the NGO media machine, and the resources of taxpayers and shareholders are used in support of ends they did not intend to sanction.
Some of the paper titles deserve to be republished here as well:
"The NGO Challenge: Whose Democracy Is It Anyway?" Gary Johns, Institute of Public Affairs, Australia
"Increasing NGO Openness and Accountability" David Riggs, Capital Research Center This gets better when you go over to NGOwatch:
Do NGOs influence international organizations like the World Trade Organization? What is their agenda? Who runs these groups? Who funds them? And to whom are they accountable?
[...]
This site will, without prejudice, compile factual data about non-governmental organizations. It will include analysis of relevant issues, treaties, and international organizations where NGOs are active.
[...]
Non-governmental organizations are a time-honored tradition, in the United States and throughout the world. With greater transparency for NGOs, there will be greater accountability, and with that, we hope, greater responsibility and effectiveness for the many who are engaged in great work.
Lessee ... this from the same general crew that got the courts to seal the results of the conflict-of-interest investigation in the Hiatt Steele trial and the Arkansas Project investigation (itself the result of a case study in non-profit opacity).
The site begs for suggestions. We’re sure they wouldn’t mind hearing from us, would they?
Oh, and lastly, the irony of conservative groups complaining about misuse of the private sector by groups when government can’t do the job is just ... well, Alanis Morrisette couldn’t do it justice.
This kind of attack, accusing all attempts to extend democracy of being elitist, has a long, dishonorable history in the Republican Party, two classics being Reagan's attempts, from Governor to President, to get rid of the Legal Resources Corp., and the on-going conservative, through-the-looking-glass arguments, from Bork to Wm Pryor, against one man, one vote.
In his two most recent State of the Union addresses and in dozens of speeches around the country, this president has urged Americans to devote time and energy to community projects. And he has pledged his best efforts to expand government programs of national service.
At his road stops, Bush likes to introduce AmeriCorps workers, while telling audiences that "we'll increase AmeriCorps by 50 percent." That goal was also set forth in the president's budget for fiscal 2004, which administration documents said would take AmeriCorps up from 50,000 to 75,000 people.
Then the switch:
But despite the rhetoric, skeptics noted that Bush actually reduced his request for AmeriCorps grants from $364 million for fiscal 2003 to $324 million for fiscal 2004.
Remember when the (mal)Administration "forgot" to budget for Afghani reconstruction? Standard operating procedure for these guys.
Like falling off the scooter: aWol wants the photo op bad, but when it comes time to find the "on" switch, he gets a little, well, clumsy. (Then again, maybe we don't want aWol to get comfortable with pushing buttons....)
Jaafar Obeid, a farmer, told The Associated Press that five male relatives - including a 70-year-old man and three of his sons, - were shot by American troops who apparently mistook them for militants fleeing after attacking a U.S. tank patrol.
Lt. Col. Greg Julian, a U.S. military spokesman, declined to comment on reports of civilian casualties in the incident, which started late Thursday on the outskirts of Balad, a rural area 30 miles north of Baghdad.
"If they're wearing civilian clothing and shooting weapons at you, they are not classified as civilians," Julian said Saturday.
But townspeople said the five men were trying to douse fires in their wheat fields set by U.S. flares when soldiers shot them. Mourners set up three tents for funeral services in Elheed, the village near Balad where people said the men were killed.
Obeid said an American officer came and apologized to the family Friday morning for the deaths, which he said have devastated the village.
Sometimes, of course, "sorry" doesn't help. Oh, and the body counts are off, too. Sound familiar?
There were no American casualties but conflicting reports of Iraqi deaths. U.S. Central Command said American forces killed 27 Iraqi insurgents but officers at the scene put the number much lower, at five or seven.
But don't worry! We've got search and destroy missions underway already.
"We will maintain that pressure, causing him to react to us, rather than vice versa," said Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, U.S. ground forces commander in Iraq. "Are there bad guys still out there? Absolutely. Are we going after them? Absolutely."
For weeks, American forces have been targets of hit-and-run attacks, usually by individuals or small groups throwing grenades, or firing rockets or small arms, and then fleeing. Forty-nine U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since May 1, according to the U.S. Central Command.
Hmmm.... Who's pressuring whom, here?
"Mission Accomplished" my Aunt Fanny. RMA this, Rummy!
Posted by Potato Head
That welfare program for lumpenintelligentsia known as the American Enterprise Institute is concerned about the influence of nongovernmental organizations--you know, dangerous outfits like Amnesty International and Greenpeace, with their tiny, 3-million member mailing lists. They even held a "debate" about their influence this week. The title?
If only the leader of the free world hadn't fallen off.
On Thursday, President Bush failed to flip the "on" switch to the scooter he had purchased for his father, so the self-balancing mechanism didn't work. The president tumbled to the ground, unhurt. And news photographers, lingering outside the compound with long lenses, picked up grainy images of a presidential spill.
What, his handlers flip all the switches for him, so he's forgotten how?
From a public policy perspective, this whole episode is really too bad. If the Chinese, for example, bought into the Segway instead of following our path to a petroleum-hooked car-topia, maybe aWol's war planners could slack off a little, since the Chinese would be consuming less of "our" oil.
Americans also can show their respect for the freedom in their nation by volunteering to help fellow citizens, the president said.
``There are so many ways to improve the lives of fellow Americans - by answering the call to feed the hungry, or caring for the elderly, or teaching a child to read, or joining with neighbors to support the police, fire fighters and medics who respond to emergencies,'' he said.
"So many ways" -- except, well, having the federal government actually budget for these things. But then, we gave away all that money in tax cuts to hose the New Deal and the safety net, so that option isn't available any more.
Yep, I guess I'll just cancel a golf game or two and march down to my local police station, and, since aWol isn't budgeting for preventing shoulder-fired missiles from taking down an airplane, ask to help on that little problem.
Then again, I could show respect for freedom by donating for regime change.
Posted by Lambert
Thomas B. Edsall and Juliet Eilperin of our own Pravda, WaPo, write:
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) have said they backed a 2002 legislative provision sought by a Kansas energy company because it fit their deregulatory, free-market philosophy. Good policy, not politics, was their chief concern, they said, and the company's contributions to several Republican committees did not influence their actions.
But the head of a Kansas regulatory agency said the Republican-backed provision was more likely to help the energy company's top executives than its thousands of customers.
Well, surprise! You have to understand that in the Thug lexicon, "free market" means free for the insiders to loot. A la those fine Texas-based bidnesses Enron, Harken, and so on.
The company, Westar Energy Inc., is under federal investigation for alleged fraud. A simultaneous company-initiated inquiry, meanwhile, disclosed e-mails in which top executives last year said they believed Congress would enact the provision -- which would exempt Westar from federal oversight under the Investment Company Act -- if they donated $56,600 to campaign committees associated with four GOP lawmakers, including DeLay and Barton.
Of course, once again, this was simple faith on the part of these deluded executives ("the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"(Heb.11:1). And indeed, there is nothing to see here. How could there be?
"It never ceases to amaze me that people are so cynical they want to tie money to issues, money to bills, money to amendments," said DeLay, whose Texans for a Republican Majority PAC received a $25,000 Westar corporate contribution.
Move along, people, move along. Nothing to see here!
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, who received Westar contributions as a Senate candidate, this week declined to say whether he would recuse himself from matters involving the company, the Associated Press reported.
"Never ceases to amaze me"... So stunning in its stark, simple beauty. So sublime in its boldness, its audacity, in the rich, rich flavor of its deeply unctuous and Pharisaical holier-than-thou-ness. So very, very duck pit-ready. It would bring a tear to my eye, if I were not already, with Atrios, banging my head on the table.
Posted by Lambert
From Greg Miller at the LA Times:
The CIA has reassigned two senior officials who oversaw its analysis on Iraq and the deposed regime's alleged banned weapons, a move that a CIA spokesman said was routine but that others portrayed as an "exile."
The officials served in senior positions in which they were deeply involved in assembling and assessing the intelligence on Iraq's alleged stocks of chemical and biological arms.
One of the officials was reassigned last week to the CIA's personnel department after spending the last several months heading the Iraq Task Force, a special unit set up to provide 24-hour support to military commanders during the war.
The other, a longtime analyst who had led the agency's Iraq Issue Group, was dispatched on an extended mission to Iraq. [italics mine] The group is responsible for the core analysis of all the intelligence the United States collects on Iraq.
Harlow, the CIA spokesman, said the woman "is moving on to an assignment in Iraq to support important issues out there." He noted that, as an expert on the country, she welcomed the opportunity to work there. Before Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled, he said, "we didn't have positions in Iraq."
This week, the White House put Tenet in charge of the ongoing weapons hunt, a job that had belonged to the Pentagon.
"They handed the whole ball to George," said one intelligence source familiar with the details of the assignment. He said the message being sent to Tenet seemed clear: "You said [the banned weapons] were there. You go find them. [italics mine]"
Posted by Lambert
Bob Kemper of the Chicago Tribune writes about it here.
Money talks. (See ePatriot button at left.)
"Most Republicans are referring to it as the Bush juggernaut," said GOP strategist Scott Reed.
As he did in the last campaign, Bush will lean heavily on the so-called Pioneers, the fundraisers who brought in at least $100,000 each in 2000. They will be asked to raise at least $200,000 each this time, Bush advisers said.
The Bush campaign once said there were 212 Pioneers. Forty-three of them received public jobs after the election, including 19 ambassadorships and two Cabinet posts, according to campaign watchdog groups. But documents recently made public show there were more than 500 Pioneers.
Oops! 500 versus 212. But who's counting?
And about that cornerstone (well, sorta):
James Zogby, a former Gore adviser who now is with the Arab American Institute, recalled that before the 2002 midterm elections, the White House successfully refocused the campaign on national security by initiating a debate over the invasion of Iraq. That gave Republicans an edge they used to take control of the Senate.
The Bush team appears poised to try a similar tactic in 2004, Zogby said, this time by playing up the memory of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The GOP is starting with an unusually late nominating convention in New York, not far from the World Trade Center site and just days before the third anniversary of the attacks.
Republican strategist Charlie Black, who worked for Bush's father, said the White House never would manipulate memories of Sept. 11 for political purposes. "That's a ridiculous charge," Black said.
Great. Now I'm all reassured, since up is down, black is white, ignorance is strength, and so forth.
Posted by Lambert
Jack Beatty in The Atlantic Monthly has an interesting analysis. Go read.
By any definition, not acting now to narrow the gap between revenues and outlays is a dereliction of fiduciary responsibility. Cutting taxes in the face of it is willful recklessness. But this policy failure is a political success for the Rove/Bush strategy of keeping the sun from setting on the GOP era. Rove is open about the alchemy required. He laid it out for his Boswell, the invaluable Nicholas Lemann, of The New Yorker. Tax cuts and budget deficits will starve the government of funds for discretionary spending on things like after-school programs, health care, and public transportation. Receiving fewer services, Americans will demand tax relief. The idea is to create a permanent constituency for tax cuts, especially among poorer Americans, those "lucky duckies," in the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial, who pay little or no federal income taxes now. The Journal, the Administration's oracle on taxes, says the key to cutting government is to shift more of the tax burden on to the people at the lower end of the economic spectrum—those who work at Wal-Mart, who clean office buildings, staff nursing homes and school cafeterias. Since most state tax codes follow the federal template, the Bush cuts will trigger state income tax cuts, which will force more reductions in state spending and/or increases in state sales and local property taxes to balance state budgets. Sales and property taxes fall with painful severity on the less affluent. Piece by piece, under successive tax revolts, the regulatory responsibilities assumed by the federal government beginning a hundred years ago will be abandoned, and the programs of the Great Society (Medicare, Medicaid, Federal Aid to Education, Head Start, etc.) and the New Deal (Social Security) will be hollowed out, dismantled, or privatized.
Alert reader MacJazz classifies such a strategy as Hypertaxica Evisceralis, adding to the Farmer's brilliant (and frightening) taxonomy of the symptoms of Bump-Money Pox.
Posted by Lambert
Maggie Haberman of the NY Daily news writes:
In another development yesterday, Pataki insisted he doesn't plan to lay the cornerstone for a 1,776-foot spire at Ground Zero during next year's Republican convention.
The comments came after a published report suggesting that rebuilding officials were pushing to break ground for the so-called Freedom Tower during the convention, which will be held in the city in August 2004.
Patakis's non-denial denial raises the next question -- Which Republican does plan to lay the cornerstone duringthe Republican Convention?
Of course, this whole problem could be solved very simply. The White House could simply issue a statement that they have no plans to politicize 9/11 in any way. How hard could that be?
The main oil export pipeline linking Iraq (news - web sites) and Turkey, halted since the U.S.-led war on Baghdad, was hit by fire and explosions caused by a gas leak, U.S. authorities in Iraq said on Friday.
Turkey said investigations were under way to establish whether sabotage was to blame for the blast in the Iraqi section of the pipeline in northern Iraq late on Thursday.
The Turkish state-run news agency Anatolian said its correspondent in Iraq had reported another explosion on Friday afternoon around 30 miles from the previous blast. It gave no explanation for the latest explosion.
Odd that on my occassional strolls through the room where my dog, Apu, watches the cable news shows, I heard no mention of anything like this.
Sabotage Hits Iraq Pipeline as US Prepares to Resume Exports
"It's to stop the Americans taking the oil out to Turkey"
An Iraqi oil pipeline was burning after being sabotaged as the country's crude was set to return to the world market, and despite an offensive by US-led forces against opponents of their occupation regime.
Fires blazed on the major pipeline from Iraq's northern oilfields after what residents said were twin bomb attacks aimed at sabotaging exports through Turkey.
Of course, as patriots we should take anything the French have to say about Iraq with a soupcon of sel de mer, (yes, it's more expensive, but you can taste the difference) - still, they do a good roundup of how well our stay there isn't going.
Something I didn't know:
Four European companies, a Turkish firm and the US company ChevronTexaco were awarded contracts to buy 9.5 million barrels of Iraqi oil, returning it to the international market after a three-month suspension, industry sources said.
If oil revenues are to be used to pay for the reconstruction of Iraq, does that include the cost of our occupation? Will those revenues go directly to the companies awarded the reconstruction contract? Has any of this been explained to Iraqis?
If it were the express purpose of the Bush administration to convince Iraqis that their most precious resource is being hijacked by a foreign occupier, could they be doing a better job? I think not.
Posted by Atrios
I´ll have much more to say about this at a later date, but the page B3 headline in the New York Times (in the print edition, not online, according to reader de) which says "GOAL IS TO LAY CORNERSTONE AT GROUND ZERO DURING G.O.P. CONVENTION" makes me want to puke.
This is sick, and we have to do something about it.
Posted by the farmer
I don't know about anyone else out there but I'm worried about the bump-monkey pox. I've been following along with the latest developments on television and the whole business is giving me the creeps. They had a picture of some guy who'd been bitten on the neck by some foul infected creature and now he's squirreled away in some E-4 containment facility in Virginia or Atlanta or some god-forsaken outpost like that.
So I did some sneaking around on my own time and I think I found the source of the bump-monkey pox. Or at least a whole festering pool of the slippery little buggers.
They're RIGHT HERE!
Yeeks, huh! See what I mean. And ugly buggers they are. I contacted The Center for the Study of Ideological Conservatism (C-SIC) and asked them what they knew about the bump-monkey pox and if they could send me any information they might have collected concerning the mutant scourge. They seemed frightened by my request and redirected me to Ehrlich Altermon, director of the NCSIML, National Center for the Study of Infectious Media Lunacies. Good thing too because this guy filled me in on all the awful details.
As I was to learn, Dr. Altermon has examined thousands of cases of the bump-monkey pox and its impact over the years. The bump-monkey pox it seems is very similar to the ditto-parrot squawk virus, that has been migrating for many years to otherwise healthy populations by way of infected avian media-mogul droppings. The bump-monkey pox is similar but it spreads primarily via pet lapblogs and similarly infected domestic critters.
Altermon, predicts a possible rise in infection rates as rabid right winged belfry bats and fuzzy tongued GOP shrub shrews colonize media talk show rafters and gnaw away at the roots of independent critical journalism and representative democracy.
Investigators learned that the bump-monkeys were probably first infected with the virus after contact with the salivary secretions of the giant Limbaughian dung swine, which is native to many parts of the country. Both the bump-monkey pox and the Limbaughian dung swine virus are hosted by the GOP-elephantiasis filial worm, which has been reproducing at an alarming rate in the United States in recent years.
Infections seem to be greatest in the red regions shown on this map. While the blue regions seem less susceptible to infestation. At least for now. Good thing too because pandemics similar to bump-monkey pox and Limbaughian dung swine virus have occurred in past years in countries such as Germany, Italy, Venezuela, Spain, Vichy France, Austria, Chile, and elsewhere. Infecting large numbers of the population and resulting in millions of deaths and untold amounts of misery and terror and pain and general all around out of control horror.
Bump-monkey pox is not necessarily transmitted by casual initial contact or short interaction with an infected carrier, but may in some cases display early warning signs of it's presence. Doctors who initially observed early symptoms believed they were facing Limbaughian dung swine fever, which displays many of the same characteristics as bump-monkey pox, but no, they are in fact not exactly the same animals because their avenue of infection is essentially different. This is the bump-monkey pox. And it's a pox on all of our house. Stop the pox.
Both bump-monkey pox and Limbaughian dung swine fever often exhibit the following symptoms:
#1-Christianus Psychosis - Irrational often deranged feelings of conservative Christian persecution. May result in damage to rational thought processes or loss of contact with temporal reality. May result in the removal of children from public schools or a book deal for Trent Lott (R- NeoConfederate States of America).
#2- Clenis(tm) Envy - Hyper agitated obsessive compulsive fascination with the Clenis(tm). A wish by these same infected agents to have a Clenis(tm). This neurosis can range from mildly disturbing feelings of inferiority to full throttle ritualistic Clenis(tm) obsessed behavioral disorders.
#3- Spinning Disease - Characterized by fanciful circular arguments that are often accompanied by bouts of childish taunting and repetitions of nonsensical anecdotal story telling. May result in lightheadedness, dizziness, and projectile vomiting.
#4- Hydraphobia Liberalis - Mental disorder. A quasi religious system of irrational beliefs and delusions characterized by terrifying manufactured fears of liberalism, humanist plots, cabals of tax supported demonic public school system fiends, communist conspiracies, and other mythological beasts and phantasms capable of delivering up all variety of grave horrors and menace designed to thwart the errand of the true believer.
#5- Linguistic Intolerance - An inability to digest foreign languages and French cheese.
#6- Homoflagaphobia - Irrational fear of rip-stop nylon rainbow flags.
#7- Punditestinal Gasbagoenteritis - May include sporadic uncontrollable verbal diarrhea often followed by incontinent bouts of Palter-paludism (see below #8)
#8- Palter-paludism - Feverish bouts of pathological lying including sweaty handwringing and chilly non-responsive catatonic memory blackouts and desperate attempts to evade the truth. Some severe cases may display an inability to differentiate reality from scripted stage-managed fantasy.
#9- Intellectualis Constipare - Inability to go inside public libraries and art museums.
#10- Delusus Fallacia: includes delusions of heroic grandeur and Blood of Kings heritage fantasies often accompanied by a swollen or over inflated sense of entitlement, or, in severe advanced cases, paranoia and a complete loss of contact with reality. (physical side effects may also include: Confederosis Halitosis below #14)
#11- Undescended Testicular Fortitude: Often characterized by a dangerous abuse or misuse of feminism. May result in impotence, sterility, or long months condemned to ice fishing with lonely guy buddies.
#12- Affirmative Refraction - Inverted or bent perceptions of racial realities - historical objects in mirrors may appear smaller than actual size. Characterized by an abnormal production of hysteron proterons in the brain.
#13- Hillaryosis Neurosia - (hustera hillaria) characterized by hysterical, often uncontrollable excessive emotional outbursts, including severe panic attacks at the mere mention of Hillary Clinton.
#14- Confederosis Halitosis - A stale reminder of old bad breath.
#15- Patriotic Paramnesia - A delusion of historical memory in which hyper-nationalistic authoritarian fantasy and objective democratic reality are confused. (also see: Patriotic Correctness)
#16- NRAbies: An infectious viral disease often transmitted by infected batty reactionary card carrying members of the colony. Symptoms may include frothing paranoid ravings, a violent irrational fear of "strangers", (see: hydraphobia liberalis), hallucinations followed by nightmarish visions of fanged foreign invaders or domestic predators absconding with second amendment. Severe cases may result in full blown buggy-eyed insanity and possible quarantine.
#17- The dreaded CAPS-LOCK disease!
There are many more where those come from....but you get the idea.
So, like I said. Lets stop the bump-monkey pox from reaching out and biting our loved ones.
Support a national campaign to immunize the world against the ravages of the bump-monkey pox.
KARACHI - Such is the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, compounded by the return to the country of a large former Afghan communist refugees, that United States and Pakistani intelligence officials have met with Taliban leaders in an effort to devise a political solution to prevent the country from being further ripped apart.
Every time somebody starts complaining that the Democrats need a coherent foreign policy I just want to bang my head against the table and ask them just what the coherent Bush foreign policy is.
I admit that the Democrats have lost the rhetorical war, but only because the media lovingly approved of such inanities as "dead or alive" and "you´re with us or you´re against us."
Now that those twin pillars of the Bush doctrine are, as they say, no longer operative, can we have a reasonable discussion again?
Former U.S. First Lady Hillary Clinton says she feels sorry for everyone who was caught up in the scandal of her husband's affair with Monica Lewinsky -- including Lewinsky herself.
In a British television interview broadcast Friday, Clinton -- now a U.S. Senator for New York -- said she felt sorry for everyone hurt by the "relentless, partisan" 1998 investigation into her husband's relationship with the White House intern.
Asked by broadcaster Trevor McDonald whether that included Lewinsky, Clinton replied, "Absolutely."
Clinton said political forces hostile to her husband had driven the frenzy surrounding the Lewinsky story, which led to President Clinton's impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted by the U.S. Senate.
"There were so many victims, and these people were willing to destroy anyone in order to end my husband's presidency," she said.
"That is a point I tried to make in the book is that this very personal, painful experience for us as a couple and a family was brought to public light not by people who cared about my husband's soul or our marriage," she added. "You know, they were motivated by political malice."
Republican leaders have for now headed off a full-blown investigation into the Bush administration’s prewar claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But unless inspection teams come up with something soon that President George W. Bush can call a smoking gun, a formal inquiry is inevitable.
The stakes are too high to gloss over what got us to this point. Bush created the expectation that large stores of chemical and biological weapons would be found in Iraq and that Saddam had an active nuclear program. Nothing of consequence has yet been uncovered—suggesting either a colossal intelligence failure or the selective use and manipulation of the data that was available to suit the administration’s political aims.
These are serious charges that go to both the administration’s candor and its competence. The only predicate to a policy of preemption is good intelligence, so you know what you’re preempting. If you don’t have that, the new Bush foreign policy has no merit.
Of course, there's a gratuitous slam on the Dems in here, but it looks like the CW is turning rancid for aWol very fast. Maybe the "Mission Accomplished" codpiece-fest on the Abraham Lincoln really was that jumping-the-shark moment we've all been dreaming of.
Then again, can the Thugs truly be so arrogant and incompetent that they haven't put a backup scheme for "discovering" the weapons in place, presumably in a Faux exclusive? Is this any way to run an empire?
The DPS postings substantiate what DPS officers have said: They were taking orders from Republican officials, who were nowhere near as "hands off" as Craddick and Perry have claimed. Even more alarming are the materials suggesting that other, as yet unidentified, personnel were also involved in the search: According to notes provided to the DPS by Austin Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, a couple of legislators' spouses were apparently followed or watched by plainclothes operatives of whom the DPS claims no knowledge.
Whatever the complete and unredacted story of the state's pursuit of the absent House Democrats, the surviving DPS documents make clear it is yet to be fully revealed.
Hmmm.... Plainclothes operatives....
Lieberman was on this one, right? Hope he doesn't feel the need to be too polite.
Anthony Fish, her husband, is one of 212,560 reservists and guardsmen on active duty, either overseas or for homeland security, according to a Pentagon count released Wednesday.
That's down from a high of 224,528 on April 30. But with no clear exit point for U.S. troops in Iraq, the number of reserves on duty may stay elevated for some time.
While reservists can be activated for up to two years, some relatives back home say deployments this year have already left them struggling financially and emotionally.
Jay Farrar, a former Marine Corps officer and now vice president and military analyst at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the situation reflects the changed nature of the military.
The Guard and Reserves have been needed for specialist functions, such as civil affairs, in recent conflicts dating back to the Balkans, he says.
"It isn't one weekend a month and two weeks a year anymore," Farrar says. "There is no such thing as a 'weekend warrior' anymore in the Guard and Reserve. These people operate so much more as part of an overall security framework."
That means more people putting lives on hold.
Sounds to me like deploying additional force to Korea is going to be hard (military people please correct me).
So, how does aWol plan to take the North Korean nukes out, anyhow? Oh, I know, patient diplomacy.
White House Says Bush Had More Evidence Iraq Sought Uranium in Africa
The White House on Friday stood by President Bush's assertion that Iraq has sought uranium in Africa in recent years, saying that his allegation in January was supported by more evidence than a series of letters now known to have been forged.
Additional intelligence pointed to Iraq also seeking uranium in Somalia and possibly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said a senior Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity. The uranium reportedly sought was in a raw form that would have to undergo a complicated enrichment process before it could be used in a nuclear weapon.
Officials did not specify the sources of any such additional intelligence. Intelligence officials have previously described other evidence of recent Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium in Africa as fragmentary.
After Bush repeated the British claim in his State of the Union address in January, the United Nations sought U.S. documentation. The purported Iraq-Niger letters were turned over to the United Nations, which found them to be forged.
In retrospect, officials said, it would have been better to have left the uranium claim out of the president's speech, even though the speech was fact-checked by the CIA and other agencies. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Sunday the report was not central to the president's case that Iraq had prohibited weapons and programs.
Hmmm... The uranium "would have [had] to undergo a complicated enrichment process"... But I thought the threat was imminent? And what would the Iraqis have processed the uranium with? Those aluminum tubes?
"And up through the ground came a bubblin' crude [sing it!]" -- forgeries, that is. Big Lies. Shifting stories. Spin. Insults to the intelligence of the American people....
UPDATE: The "money quote" from TNR, thanks to alert reader David:
Are we expected to believe that the administration has been sitting on a mountain of evidence suggesting Saddam had tried to purchase uranium from multiple African countries, but that the only piece of evidence it actually ended up citing in public was the one that happened to be bogus? Are we expected to believe that, once Niger story was publicly revealed to be bogus, the administration decided it'd be better to keep sitting on the legitimate evidence that Saddam had been trying to purchase uranium from Africa and, instead, to just let the bogus evidence speak for itself?
Well, Dick, I guess we could share this incredibly incriminating, incredibly damning pile of evidence with the rest of the world. But then that would probably prove the merits of the war beyond a reasonable doubt, and getting help from all those second-rate European armies would be much more trouble than it's worth. Good point, Don. Why don't we just keep that stuff quiet and rest our case with the forged Niger documents...
Are you kidding us? THERE ARE NO OTHER SOURCES. It's about time the administration owned up to it.
The U.S. is now moving rapidly to relocate its forces in South Korea well to the south of the DMZ. I suspect the real reason is to move them out of range of North Korean artillery. At present, if we launch airstrikes on North Korea, Pyongyang can respond with a massive, World War I-style artillery bombardment of U.S. ground troops that could kill thousands. The sudden withdrawal of Americans to positions south of the Han river reveals our intention to go after North Korea's nuclear and missile facilities. A possible North Korean riposte: demand Japan expel all American forces or kiss Osaka goodbye.
Seems reasonable. Eh? Think Unka Karl is planning the marketing now, as he did the last time aWol was on vacation? Or maybe it will just be a surprise! (Strategically, this would make more sense. Copenhagen them....)
NOTE: Give me an honest paleo any day over one of these blow-dried, cell-phoned, talking-point-spouting, Self-Identified "Christian" weasels ....
Posted by Lambert
William Sturgiss Lind of the Free Congress Foundation writes:
It is now evident that Saddam Hussein's possession of vast quantities of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) is about as likely as Mars having canals, complete with gondolas and singing gondoliers. Remember, it wasn't just a couple of stink bombs we accused him of possessing. According to data compiled by columnist Nicholas Kristof, the governments of the United States and (once) Great Britain told the world that Saddam had 500 tons of mustard and nerve gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum, almost 30,000 banned munitions and the tornado that abducted Dorothy. So far, all we have found is two empty trailers. Presumably, American troops had sufficient time to paint over the "Allied Van Lines" logos.
Since Saddam's WMD were one of the principal stated reasons for this strategically curious war, their absence is something more than a social faux pas. Were the American and British publics, as Pat Buchanan puts it, lied into war? If they were, it would not be the first time. In Britain, the practice goes back at least as far as the 18th century and the War of Jenkin's Ear. Americans were lied into World War I by cartoons of German soldiers bayoneting Belgian babies and into Vietnam by a Tonkin Gulf torpedo boat attack that never happened.
It may be -- though I doubt it -- that our intelligence agencies really believed Saddam had all that stuff. But even if that is what they reported to the decision-makers, the decision-makers should have known better to swallow it. If they did not know that, they are not fit to be making military decisions. They lack the most basic understanding of the nature of military intelligence, a nature no technology can alter (and can easily make worse, by making the errors more convincing).
The upshot is that we went to war and wrecked a country over something that, barring an unlikely revelation, was not true. The American people don't seem to care. Perhaps they expect to be misled by their government, or, more likely, they have just changed the channel.
But the rest of the world does care. The international credibility of American assertions based on military intelligence is now zero. When we make claims about other countries -- as we are now doing about Iran -- not a soul will believe them, even when they happen to be true. At this point, Americans should not believe them either.
These clowns lie to themselves, too, as well as to us. Oh, wait, let's call it faith. "Now faith is the substance
of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"(Heb.11:1). So even though there is no real evidence, that's OK--because aWol has faith, we can have faith, and go to war about unseen things on the basis of hope. Now don't you feel better?
Posted by Lambert
Micheal Gordon in Isvestia does some actual reportage (fancy that!).
The Next War
After American M-1 tanks rolled into Baghdad to depose Saddam Hussein, one of the central military questions was where the United States might fight next. Would American forces continue their march to Syria? Or would the Bush administration step up the military and political pressure on Iran?
Two months after the battle for Baghdad, we now know the answer: the next fight is in Iraq.
For the Americans, this is a campaign of raids, bombing strikes and dragnets, as American commanders try to isolate and destroy remnants of the old regime. It is more like a counterinsurgency than an invasion. The Americans' goal is to keep the pressure on and whittle down their foes until a new Iraqi authority is able to maintain order.
Geography is another factor. Iraq is a larger country and there are many hiding places. American forces are only now venturing west and north of Baghdad in substantial numbers. As the Americans fan out, they will increasingly encounter armed resistance. There is not new resistance. This is old resistance that the American troops here are only now taking on as they extend their reach in Iraq.
This is not a fight that allied commanders expect to settle with a single hammer blow. The American assessment is that much of the resistance is organized. That is clear from the signaling systems that enemy fighters use in towns like Falluja to notify their fighters of the approach of American troops, the leaflets that have been found promising rewards for Iraqis who attack American troops, the ambushes that Iraqi fighters try to set for American troops and the enemy camp in the west. But American officers do not believe that the assaults are controlled by a single enemy commander or organization.
American military commanders, in fact, seem to be trying to prepare the public for a campaign that could be prolonged and in which progress is not at linear as the expeditious march toward Baghdad.
Anyone seen hide or hair of this "new Iraqi authority"? Maybe they're with the WMDs and we'll get a two-fer?
And let's lay this "liberal bias" canard to rest right now. From the decidedly not liberal Joe Galloway at military.com:
If winning the war in Iraq was so easy why is securing the peace so difficult? After all, the same 190,000 American and British troops who blasted their way from the Kuwait border to Baghdad in just three weeks are still there.
But since the fall of Baghdad everything that could go wrong has.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld early on dismissed the wild scenes of looting and shooting as the sort of "untidiness" one must expect when a dictator falls and a new day dawns. If it was to be expected, why was there no coherent plan to deal with it?
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan says the 190,000 coalition soldiers he won the three-week war with is nowhere near enough to secure law and order in a nation the size of California with 24 million increasingly angry people.
When Army chief of staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki suggested to Congress last February that securing Iraq after the war might require "several hundred thousand troops," he was instantly slapped down by Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. They have suggested that 100,000 ought to be enough. Clearly it is not.
But if the slide into anarchy isn't halted quickly, no amount of American troops will be able to prevent fundamentalist Shiite Moslem leaders from stepping into the convenient vacuum and crafting an anti-American regime.
"Mission Accomplished" my Aunt Fanny. Lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. These clowns don't even know they're lying, it comes so naturally to them!
Ten years after President Bill Clinton first proposed expanding Medicare coverage to include prescription drugs, the lobbying on the issue has fundamentally changed, lobbyists on all sides of the issue say. For 10 years, major pharmaceutical companies stymied drug legislation. Insurance companies often stood in the way, while senior advocates such as AARP simply pleaded with Congress to act.
This time, competing interest groups realize, Congress is serious.
The well-financed, increasingly powerful pharmaceuticals lobby has made perhaps the most dramatic shift in position -- from outright opposition to cautious support. With Republicans in control of the White House, House and Senate, the industry has decided this is the time to lock in the best deal it can get, one GOP pharmaceutical lobbyist said.
Although the prescription drug coverage may prove too skimpy for many seniors, legislation will at least take the pressure off Congress temporarily to impose more draconian price controls, the lobbyist said.
Feed big pharma, get the voters off their backs, put the whole thing on federal plastic because of the tax cut for the rich, and get out of Dodge before the bills come due. Does that sum up Thug policy on this?
aWol steals the Dems clothes on this one, and triangulates against his paleo ("government shouldn't help people") base. It's positively Clintonian! I could come to love aWol, if only I didn't know who--and what--he is.
When President Bush declared on May 1 that major combat operations had ended in Iraq, there was little discussion of what he meant. For all practical purposes, it seemed the war was over.
It is not.
Since the president made his statement to waves of applause from sailors aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, 45 American servicemen have died in Iraq. Commanders say there is much more fighting ahead.
Although large parts of Iraq are relatively peaceful and U.S. military control overall is not in doubt, an amalgam of shadowy resistance forces, including unknown numbers of non-Iraqi fighters, are carrying out almost daily hit-and-run attacks against the American occupation forces.
Does "support the troops by bringing them home" still cut it? Now, is it more like "We broke it, we bought it"?
Anyone have any thoughts on this that go beyond invective? For example, what's the way forward for the people of the US that leaves us with (some would say restores) a constitutional form of government? Empires and republics, notoriously, do not play well together.
And he knows whereof he speaks. What could be more surreal than Mr. Kagan's use of the word, "discrepancy" in the following passage:
Yesterday The Post continued the barrage, reporting that Defense Intelligence Agency analysts claimed last September merely that Iraq "probably" possessed "chemical agent in chemical munitions" and "probably" possessed "bulk chemical stockpiles, primarily containing precursors, but that also could consist of some mustard agent and VX," a deadly nerve agent.
This kind of "discrepancy" qualifies as front-page news these days. Why? Not because the Bush administration may have -- repeat, may have -- exaggerated the extent of knowledge about what Hussein had in his WMD arsenal. No, the critics' real aim is to prove that, as a New York Times reporter recently put it, "the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq may mean that there never were any in the first place."
Kagan provides us with an impressive list of all the people besides members of the Bush administration who have said Saddam had those WMD - everyone from Jacque Chirac to Al Gore, and BTW, suddenly Hans Blitz's opinion matters, hey, so does Bill Clinton's.
And if you'd like to see a master surrealist doing his dadaistic best to boggle your mind, check out this last paragraph:
So if you like a good conspiracy, this one's a doozy. And the best thing about it is that if all these people are lying, there's only one person who ever told the truth: Saddam Hussein....
The president's defenders want to frame the argument like this: the president said there was WMD; his critics said there was WMD. If he's wrong, everybody was wrong. If there was a 'plot' to deceive the American people, as Kagan would have it, even the president's critics were in on the plot. So what kind of plot would that be?
This is just a head-fake with an advanced degree and it's deeply dishonest.
Josh reads the head-fake, stops Kagan at the scrimage line and scores something of a rhetorical touchdown himself:
It does Kagan no credit to tar critics as conspiracy theorists or muddy up the water enough so that the debate can't be had.
.....
The fact is that the administration and its advocates are now doing everything they can to run away from a year's worth of arguments about the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein.... conservatives are often fond of saying that 'ideas have consequences.'
Consumer confidence in the economy fell more than expected in mid-June, according to a Friday report from the University of Michigan.
The consumer-sentiment index fell to 87.2 in mid-June, from 92.1 at the end of May, said market sources with access to the report.
The number missed economists' target for a reading of 93 and was disappointing as many had expected an improvement in consumer confidence now that the war in Iraq is over.
The expectations index was said to have fallen steeply to 84.2 from 91.4 in May, suggesting that a sluggish U.S. economy and stagnating job creation is weighing on consumers.
Maybe most people have figured out that the Thugs tax "relief" doesn't mean diddly (for them).
At the Bill Blass fall showcase in Bergdorf Goodman, Ellen Harris made her biggest wardrobe investment for quite a while, ordering a dress and jackets that together cost several thousand dollars.
But at a Wal-Mart in West Little Rock, Ark., bookkeeper Vanessa Wilson said she was holding back on purchases.
"My husband's job is kind of iffy," the Benton, Ark., resident said. "So I'm not frivolous."
The professional and business service industries lost 900,000 jobs since the end of 2000, but Koropeckyj said that sector has stabilized, and expects to see a modest increase in hiring this year.
Meanwhile, the manufacturing sector lost 2.5 million workers, and Koropeckyj said, unlike the last downturn, most of those job losses are permanent.
Wal-Mart speculated recently that its consumers were nervous about spending because sales spiked after biweekly paychecks and then slowed between paydays.
And maybe most people have figured out that aWol's "Mission Accomplished" banner was for photo-op purposes only.
As usual, CW thinks the American people are stupid. They aren't.
CIA declines to take the hit for aWol on "crude forgeries"
Posted by Lambert
Au contraire, Walter Pincus. From Knight-Ridder:
Making his case for war with Iraq, President Bush in his State of the Union address this year accused Saddam Hussein of trying to buy uranium from Africa even though the CIA had warned White House and other officials that the story didn't check out.
A senior CIA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the intelligence agency informed the White House on March 9, 2002 - 10 months before Bush's nationally televised speech - that an agency source who had traveled to Niger couldn't confirm European intelligence reports that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from the West African country.
Despite the CIA's misgivings, Bush said in his State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa."
Three senior administration officials said Vice President Dick Cheney and some officials on the National Security Council staff and at the Pentagon ignored the CIA's reservations and argued that the president and others should include the allegation in their case against Saddam.
The claim later turned out to be based on crude forgeries that an African diplomat had sold to Italian intelligence officials.
"And up through the ground came a bubblin' crude" -- forgeries, that is. Big lies. Texas matters of emphasis....
Posted by Atrios
I´d been waiting for this to happen. Via Big Media Matt I see that the right wing hacks have started on a new meme - if George Bush isn´t elected in ´04 then the terrorists will have won.
Actually, Monsieur Babbin, of the National "All Hillary All The Time" Review isn´t quite making that point, but a somewhat more insidious one - that international terrorists will commit some terrorist act for the sole purpose of stopping the re-election of George Bush. I have to say this is a beautiful bit of propaganda. Congrats, Babbin, you get the Goebbels Gold Star of the Week!
So, when your family gets blown up you should understand that they weren´t really attacking them, just Dear Leader.
Over the opposition of Democrats, Republican lawmakers drafted legislation today to overhaul Head Start, the national day care program for poor children, ending a 38-year history of bipartisan consensus as old as the program.
Advocates of the current Head Start program complain that the bill's high ambitions are not matched with the money to meet them. The advocates and Democratic lawmakers also contend that they had not seen the bill under discussion until Wednesday evening, not leaving enough time for study and debate.
The bill would also allow religion-based groups that run Head Start programs to consider religion in hiring, exempting them from antidiscrimination clauses in the bill.
The measure, however, would still require all Head Start teachers to have four-year college degrees by 2008.
Amy Wilkins, executive director of the Trust for Early Education, estimates that Head Start would have to increase by $2.2 billion a year to pay its teachers a competitive salary at the higher educational level. But that money is not in the bill.
The Thugs talk the talk. But when it comes time to talk the talk -- that is, to actually appropriate some money -- it's "See you later! We gave already gave the money away in the tax cut for the rich!" True for Afghanistan, true for Homeland Security, and true here. All hat and no cattle.
Though The Newspaper of Record (not!) somehow forgets to mention the party of the Mayor involved in the story. (Hint: they talk about "family values" and "moral clarity" a lot. Bill Bennet, where are you? We need you!
[W]e don't rule out at all a close presidential election or a Democratic win.
Terry McAuliffe and the other DNC masterminds are working parallel to a growing coalition of "outside" groups to try to be ready for the day when a nominee emerges from the current chaos that is the nomination process.
But on the eve of the party's first (unsanctioned) straw poll, and the virtual eve of the kick-off of the president's fundraising juggernaut, there are likely to be many more days than not in 2003 in which Democrats (inside and outside the presidential campaign staffs) ask themselves:
"When are we going to be organized enough and effective enough to take on the president's weak record and right-wing agenda?" (Not, of course, our characterizations, but, rather, the way most Democrats think about this whole thing, and probably the best energy-builder the Democrats have going for them now.)
Let us be the first (we think) to say: the chances that there will be a true, growing-in-strength Democratic front-runner by the end of the year are very remote.
I have to say, I think Atrios has the right of it. It going to take money.
Posted by Lambert
Bismarck (Kaiser Wilhem's chancellor) first implemented social insurance.
Germany became the first nation in the world to adopt an old-age social insurance program in 1889, designed by Germany's Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The idea was first put forward, at Bismarck's behest, in 1881 by Germany's Emperor, William the First, in a ground-breaking letter to the German Parliament. William wrote: ". . .those who are disabled from work by age and invalidity have a well-grounded claim to care from the state."
Coupled with the workers' compensation program established in 1884 and the "sickness" insurance enacted the year before, this gave the Germans a comprehensive system of income security based on social insurance principles. (They would add unemployment insurance in 1927, making their system complete.)
So FDR didn't invent all this stuff. And Kaiser Wilhelm thinks that the government is supposed to help people. Surprise!
I mean, I arleady know the Rethuglicans want to take us back to the 19th century. I just didn't know it was 19th Century Prussia, pre-Bismarck.
It won't all be rest and relaxation. Bush gets regular daily briefings on pressing matters whenever he spends his time away from the White House. This weekend, salvaging Mideast peace looms large. But Bush ignored a reporter's question about that.
Maybe the constant sycophantic applause has damaged aWol's hearing.
And why do I get this uneasy feeling when I hear that aWol's on vacation but getting briefings?
Posted by Atrios
Today in Pravda, Howie Kurtz basically quotes all of Dick Morris´s little screed about Hillary and his claims that Bill Clinton beat him up. He then links to Joe Conason´s column in Salon, stating that he "challenges Morris´s account," without quoting any of it.
Conason doesn´t challenge Morris´s account - what he does is point out the fact that Morris HIMSELF is contradicting his previous stories.
Email Kurtz at kurtzh@washpost.com and ask him why in a column from a media critic it´s more important to display in full accusations of Clinton´s violence than the fact that the accuser himself has contradicted those claims in the past
Posted by Lambert
From Canada's (right wing, by Canadian standards) National Post:
The number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits hit a 20-year high last week, again pointing to a jobless economic recovery and a likely cut in interest rates later this month.
Although new claims dropped by 17,000 to 430,000 last week, the number continuing to collect state unemployment cheques hit 3.8 million, up from 3.68 million during the previous week, the U.S. Labor Department said yesterday.
"The bottom line is that the much anticipated post-war bounce in spending remains elusive and we will have to wait to see how the coming wave of tax relief and mortgage refinancing will influence the consumer in the third quarter," said David Rosenberg, chief North American economist at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York.
[Nancy Pelosi,] a top congressional Democrat slammed as "totally inadequate" a decision by Republican lawmakers to hold closed door hearings on the quality and accuracy of intelligence reports used to justify the US-led invasion of Iraq.
"If you want the public to have ... confidence in our intelligence, then there will have to be a fuller, more open" probe.
More than eight weeks after the ouster of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, the US military has yet to find Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, which the White House gave as its primary motivation for invading Iraq.
And stand up tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. And the next. All the way to 2004.
"When the orange alert goes on, it rings at City Hall, not at the State House and not at the White House," says Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, the outgoing president of the United States Conference of Mayors.
The conference estimates that when Washington raises the threat level to Code Orange, it costs the nation's localities $70 million per week. Menino figures that in Boston alone, Code Orange costs about $100,000 per day. "We have to put police on alert," Menino said in an interview. "We have to put fire on alert. We need more EMTs. People go on overtime. We have to staff emergency centers. All that is coming out of your operating budget."
"The most fundamental reason we have a federal government is to provide for the common defense," said Mayor Martin O'Malley of Baltimore, chairman of the conference's homeland-security task force. Yet the common defense against international terror has become a local burden. "When we're threatened by foreign attack," he said in an interview, the cities provide "the front-line troops."
It's easy to be cynical about money battles among levels of government. But there is something amiss when the cost of providing homeland security requires mayors to move police away from their normal crime-fighting duties. And it's troubling that the financial burdens may force these mayors to lay off some among the very cops and firefighters who are carrying the domestic burden of the battle. As O'Malley says, financing the struggle against international terror "off firehouse bingo proceeds and the local property tax" seems a strange choice for the world's only superpower.
Can the Republicans handle money? Inquiring minds want to know.
Posted by Lambert
From an editorial in the LA Times:
The abuses against the immigrant detainees who were rounded up after Sept. 11 have been amply detailed in a report released by the Justice Department's inspector general.
But the ultimate abuse, in our opinion, was the shroud of secrecy ordered by Atty. Gen. John D. Ashcroft over the entire process.
On Sept. 20, 2001, he directed the department's chief immigration judge to keep secret all information about the detainees. As a result, the government refused to disclose the names of those arrested and then closed their hearings to the public. This made any outside review of the Justice Department's actions virtually impossible; the department was not accountable to anyone outside the government until the inspector general's report was released this month.
And the report is only the tip of the iceberg. The inspector general examined the cases of only 119 out of the 762 aliens detained.
And it is clear from the Justice Department's "no apologies" response to the inspector general's report that it is not taking seriously the findings or recommendations.
Congress should demand that the Justice Department release the names of the detainees, and it should act to prohibit secret arrests and secret hearings in the future.
Unfortunately, at the House Judiciary Committee hearing, members never even addressed the secrecy of the arrests.
Posted by Atrios Move On is currently conducting their own "presidential primary" with their members. The idea is to poll them all, and then the candidate that wins will get Move On´s endorsement and considerable fundraising backing.
Posted by Atrios
Okay, we´re off to a good start here. We´re up to $740 in donations! Go give more! If Kos gets more than me then God has promised to strike me down!
Posted by Atrios
I look forward to his being drummed out of the media for contradicting his own statements. He was full of it then, or full of it now - either way he is a liar. And, as David Brock knows - once you are caught lying you are shunned by the entire news media. Email Howard Kurtz at kurtzh@washpost.com and ask him why he doesn´t comment on Morris´ prevarications.
Posted by Lambert
Fun pictures of aWol and the Segway here:
U.S. President George W. Bush is pictured in this combo image falling off a Segway personal transporter on the front driveway of his parents' summer home ...
Somehow managed to delete the earlier posts on this from blogger. Here it is again!
Posted by Lambert
The man who keeps Times readers from complete despair at the state of journalism writes:
The really important stories about Mr. DeLay, a central figure in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, involve his continuing drive to give his party a permanent lock on power.
Consider the case of Westar Energy, whose chief executive was indicted for fraud. The subsequent investigation turned up e-mail in which executives described being solicited by Republican politicians for donations to groups linked to Mr. DeLay, in return for a legislative "seat at the table." The provision Westar wanted was duly inserted into an energy bill. (Republican leaders deny that there was any quid pro quo.)
There's every reason to believe that the Westar case is unusual only in the fact that the transaction came to light. Under Mr. DeLay's leadership, Republicans have established a huge fund-raising advantage, based not just on promises — special interests have always been able to buy favorable policies, but never so brazenly — but also on threats. Mr. DeLay pioneered the "K Street strategy," which — in a radical break with tradition — punishes lobbying firms that try to maintain good relations with both parties.
A telling anecdote: When an employee tried to stop Mr. DeLay from smoking a cigar on government property, the majority leader shouted, "I am the federal government." Not quite, not yet, but he's getting there.
So what will Mr. DeLay and his associates do with their lock on power, once it is firmly established? They will push through a radical right-wing agenda.
There's no point in getting mad at Mr. DeLay and his clique: they are what they are. I do, however, get angry at moderates, liberals and traditional conservatives who avert their eyes, pretending that current disputes are just politics as usual. They aren't — what we're looking at here is a radical power play, which if it succeeds will transform our country. Yet it's considered uncool to point that out.
Many of those who minimize the threat the radical right now poses to America as we know it would hate to live in the country Mr. DeLay wants to create. Yet by playing down the seriousness of the challenge, they help bring his vision closer to reality.
In other words: "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Gutless Beltway Dems...
Millions of college students will have to shoulder more of the cost of their education under federal rules imposed late last month through a bureaucratic adjustment requiring neither Congressional approval nor public comment of any kind.
The changes, only a slight alteration in the formula governing financial aid, are expected to diminish the government's contribution to higher education by hundreds of millions of dollars, starting in the fall of 2004.
And because state and local governments are making up for aWol's shortfalls on homeland security, unfunded mandates on education, and tax giveaways to the rich, student loans are shrinking.
Whether furnished by colleges, states or the federal government, the vast majority of the nation's $90 billion in financial aid is dictated by a single, intricate equation known as the federal need analysis. Its purpose is to decipher how much of a family's income is truly discretionary and therefore fair game for covering college expenses.
Much like the federal income tax, the formula allows families to deduct some of what they pay in state and local taxes. But, this year, the department significantly reduced that amount, in some cases cutting it in half. On paper, at least, that leaves families with more money left over to pay for college, even though state and local taxes have gone up over the last year, not down.
And so much for your Pell grant.
the changes should shave off a few hundred million dollars in grants to low-income students, known as the Pell Grant. With the faltering economy and the swelling popularity of college, the program has surpassed $11 billion a year. The new formula should constrain some of that growth, the department says, though it maintains that was never the intent of recalibrating it.
Posted by Lambert
Interesting read from alert commenter antiphone.
Let's not go to war with China just yet, OK, aWol? After you gut Social Security, I'm going to have to do all my shopping at the dollar stores in my old age, and everything there is Made In China.
Whether people believe the book's author or not, they've been snatching up the memoir since it came out Monday. Publisher Simon & Schuster estimated first-day retail sales at 200,000. Tuesday's sales continued at record-breaking levels. The publisher has ordered 300,000 more copies to supplement the initial run of 1 million.
Clinton's TV appearances also have been popular. About 13.5 million people watched Barbara Walters' TV interview with Clinton, the most-watched show Sunday night.
''The response has been very gratifying,'' Clinton said. ''If people learn a little from this book, laugh a little, and can apply anything that I say to their own lives, then that will be the real success.''
Has anything at all been going on over there? Here's the media contact:
Al Felzenberg
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States
afelzenberg@9-11commission.gov
Telephone: 202-331-4062
Cellular: 202-236-4878
Fax: 202-296-5455
A government architect, prosecutors and a U.S. marshal reported to a judge Thursday on plans to construct two secure rooms in the federal courthouse for use of classified documents in the trial of a retired FBI agent and his alleged lover, who is accused of taking FBI documents while working as a China contact. ...
The defendants, James J. Smith, 59, and his intelligence "asset,' Katrina Leung, 49, of San Marino, are alleged to have mishandled classified documents during their 20-year relationship
By now, of course, the "Republican Activist" part of the story has been carefully airbrushed away by the SCLM. Move along, people! No story here, at least not as long as the room is secure. But still:
Leung, who is married and has a teenaged son, is well connected in Los Angeles Republican circles. She hosted a fund-raiser at her home for Richard Riordan's short-lived gubernatorial campaign, eventually transferring her support to Republican candidate Billl Simon after Riordan withdrew. Rep. David Dreier named her as a delegate to the California Republican Party convention in February.
Many [Democratic] party leaders fear the president may be immune to accusations that his rhetoric falls short of the facts, and not just on Iraq, but on education, tax cuts, trade, the environment, homeland security and other policies.
The way to get the word out is to get the word out. But how?
Maine lawmakers moved closer to enacting one of the nation's most far-reaching health insurance plans Thursday, burnishing the state's reputation as a pioneer in expanding access to medical care.
Both the state House and Senate gave the bill preliminary approval.
Final approval could come by Friday, and first-year Democratic Gov. John Baldacci has already endorsed the plan, which would create a quasi-public agency to help people secure medical coverage through private insurers.
"This is the only state in the country that has a clear plan, funded to provide universal health care in five years," state Sen. Michael Brennan said.
"Maine is way out front on this stuff," agreed Arthur Levin, director of the New York-based Center for Medical Consumers. "In the absence of the feds not moving in the right direction, it falls to the states to pick up the pieces."
Under the Dirigo Health plan, all 180,000 people in Maine who cannot otherwise afford coverage would have access to it by the year 2009. Dirigo, the state motto, is Latin for "I lead."
Posted by Leah
Another addition for that "Citizen's To Do" list.
Re: that Pryor Judicial nomination: Hearing was bumpy, but Republicans aren't about to back down, not unless someone makes 'em. Lisa at Ruminate This has the lowdown, links, and what needs doing. She also has an excellent analysis of why this is so important and what the Republicans have up their sleeves (you won't like it).
Posted by Leah
Atrios already posted on this, but Julia at Sisyphus Shrugged has a particularly amusing evisceration of Michael Savage's genuinely savage program for America's salvation, while she reminds us of why Neal Pollack's giving Savage his own special day.
Posted by Leah
Be among the first to overturn an FCC ruling.
The 19th is a only a week away. That's the day John McCain has scheduled a vote in the Senate Commerce Committee to report out legislation aimed at unmaking Michael Powell's day.
I hope I've left you with no excuses. Call the Washington Office of Senators on the Committee, call your own Senators and Representatives; don't expect a long conversation, they're probably mainly running a count on how much public support there is. If you can't get through, talk to someone in their local office, emphasize you want them to contact the Washington office. Call the Committe staff. Postcards work, especially if sent to the Committe directly. Send emails and faxes too.
Posted by Leah
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, has one simple question for The Honorable Condoleezza Rice
Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq's nuclear capabilitiees in his State Of The Union address?
And he's been trying to get a direct answer to it since March, 17, 03. He tried again on June 2, 03.
A man with a long attention span, he tries again in this letter to Dr. Rice, who is, after all, Assistant to the President For National Security Affairs.
The impetus for the letter was Dr. Rice's weekend appearances on This Week with George, and Meet The Press with Tim. Tant pis, but damn if her remarks did nothing to clarify the issue for Rep. Waxman. In fact, Rep. Waxman noticed a few contradictions between what Condi said and the "known facts," and damn if that didn't just raise new questions.
Take a moment and see how Waxman lays it all out, with footnotes, yet. (PDF file, so you need Adobe Reader)
A key component of President Bush's claim in his State of the Union address last January that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program -- its alleged attempt to buy uranium in Niger -- was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in early 2002, according to senior administration officials and a former government official. But the CIA did not pass on the detailed results of its investigation to the White House or other government agencies, the officials said.
Any thoughts on how we can get the media to pay more attention to that letter? Or maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe the time has come for us to think of ourselves as media, in which case the question becomes, how can we focus the attention of more voters on the kind of crucial information about the ways of this administration contained in a letter like Waxman's?
House Republicans on Thursday pushed legislation to shift most national class-action lawsuits from state to federal courts, which they say will curb lawsuit abuse that nets millions of dollars for lawyers but little or nothing for victims.
Touching concern! Not that the lawyers tend to be Democrats would have anything to do with this. Here's the rule change:
Democrats say the bill is unfair, because it would change not only future class-action lawsuits, but even the ones being heard in court right now.
And now the what Grover Norquist would call the "date rape" part:
House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., planned changes to the bill to make it closer to the Senate's version.
"I believe that by offering this amendment we can attract more bipartisan support for this important legislation," Sensenbrenner said Wednesday.
When will the gutless Beltway Dems get up off their knees?
Three former Dynegy Inc. executives were charged in a federal indictment unsealed Thursday with conspiracy and fraud for their roles in accounting transactions that regulators say improperly boosted the energy company's cash flow by $300 million and cut its taxes.
Dynegy is still under investigation by California power regulators who found that a series of blackouts that plagued the state in 2000 and 2001 could have been avoided if generators had not withheld electricity at crucial times. The California Public Utilities Commission named the five largest non-utility power generators, including Dynegy.
Why can't aWol just go home and clean up his own backyard?
THEN
"There is already a mountain of evidence that Saddam Hussein is gathering weapons for the purpose of using them. And adding additional information is like adding a foot to Mount Everest."
-Ari Fleischer, White House spokesperson, Sept. 6, 2002
NOW
"Iraq's the size of the state of California. It's got tunnels, caves, all kinds of complexes."
-George W. Bush, saying it may take a while, but the U.S. will eventually locate an arsenal of weapons that Washington suspects is there. May 3, 2003
Good to see this stuff getting into the mainstream, even on the same continent as the US SCLM is some progress.
Posted by Atrios
I missed this story about a little right wing terrorism plot. Apparently one of John Noster´s buddies is just SHOCKED about the whole thing.
Posted by Atrios
I hate this stuff. I really wish I could just embrace it and score some cheap partisan points, but this kind of thing just gets me totally livid.
PENSACOLA -- An opponent of abortion who had strong ties to the gunmen and bombers who waged deadly violence against clinics here over the past two decades was arrested Tuesday on charges that he molested a resident at the girls home he owns.
Florida Highway Patrol troopers arrested John Burt, 65, shortly before 1 a.m. at an Interstate 10 rest stop near Chattahoochee, about 170 miles east of Pensacola.
Burt is accused of assaulting a 15-year-old resident of Our Father's House, the home for troubled teenage girls that he owns in nearby Milton. He is charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, lewd or lascivious conduct and three counts of lewd or lascivious molestation.
The girl and another resident who is a potential witness have been taken into protective custody by the state. Santa Rosa County Sheriff's spokesman Jerry Henderson said investigators are seeking other potential victims.
Posted by Lambert
Out of the mouths of wingers... William S. Lind writes:
To put it plainly, Rumsfeld treats people like crap. Working for him is like working for Leona Helmsley, except that Leona is less self-centered. Unless you are one of his sycophants, equipped with a good set of knee-pads and plenty of lip balm, you can expect to be booted down the stairs on a regular basis.
Truth be told, some senior officers deserve to be treated that way, because that is how they always treated their subordinates. But Rummy does not discriminate between perfumed princes and the real thinkers and leaders. He has driven more than one of the latter to hang up his hat in disgust, to his service's and the nation's loss.
Gosh! Think Rummy's, uh, demands might have affected how WMD intelligence made its way up the chain of command?
Posted by Atrios
Congratulations to the 430,000 new jobless! And, congratulations to the 5000 additional new jobless who were missed, as usual, last week!
Posted by Atrios
The mentally (or at least factually) challenged Peter Bruin Hays III writes a charming letter to the New York Times in which he calls Tom Friedman´s equation of tax cuts with service cuts as Blue State "elitist thinking."
Mr. Hays III does live in one of those rarities - a "red state" which is a net contributor to the rest of the country - but as this table makes clear most Bush voting states are sucking at the federal government teat.
[ACLU] ranks have swelled by more than 25 percent since the autumn of 2001, when Ashcroft made his first pitch for the new surveillance tools that are now codified in the USA Patriot Act.
Backed by a $50 million budget, the ACLU is juggling 33 lawsuits on the terrorism front. It also starts production Monday on a national TV ad that will target Ashcroft's current push for expanded powers beyond the Patriot Act. He wants more authority to jail suspects without bond before trial, and he wants a looser definition of "material support" for terrorism - a move, the ACLU claims, that would allow federal agents to go after political protesters.
Anthony Romero, the executive director, triggered a roar of approval yesterday when, in a speech, he skewered "the timidity, the reticence, the complicity of the Democrats" who helped pass the Patriot Act with scant scrutiny - thereby demonstrating that Democrats would "rather stick their heads in the sand than stick their necks out for the Bill of Rights."
Hmm... A membership surge. Sounds like voters, maybe? Those Beltway Dems... When are they going to get up off their knees?
A senior Republican official said the first lady will be "a high-velocity campaign asset second only to the vice president," working cities President Bush skips and using her accessible glamour to turn her admirers into voters, donors and door-knockers.
The official said Laura Bush "embodies the compassionate side of the compassionate conservative agenda" ....
Laura Bush is a real nice lady and I'm sure if she knew what her husband was up to she wouldn't support it. Yep, that's the line to take.
Posted by Atrios
So, I figured while I´m travelling I´d take a break from begging for money for me (though if you´re feeling generous...) and join up with Epatriots. So, click the link and give them all your money so that Big Loser Kos doesn´t raise more money than me and make me look bad.
Actually, what finally sold me on the whole thing is the fact that they´re offering really cool rewards. Apparently, if I raise a mere $17,829.34 I get to spend an evening in the hot tub with Ann Lewis. For double that, they throw in Ann Richards too. And, if I get to $66,666.66 in money raised, it´s "Cuban Cigar evening with Bill Clinton." Who WOULDN´T want that?
In all seriousness, aside from Terry McAulliffe whispering sweet nothings in my ear, the big prize involves going to the DNC convention. Now, that would be cool. Prove to the DNC that I Have The Most Powerful Blog. Stop spending your kids´ inheritance on booze and gambling and spend it on the DNC instead. For all the talk of the evils of money in politics, the truth is there is surprisingly little money in politics. They say Bush will have $200 million or something for his little war chest. I have 10,000 or more regular readers it seems. If each one of you gives $50 that´s a cool half a million dollars. Not so shabby. The Dems are currently having to fight with both arms tied behind their backs. Yes, I know it´s partially because they´re spineless wimps. But, it´s also because they don´t have the cash.
If Kos raises more money than me then the terrorists will have won!
On any given day, owing to tight budgets, the evasiveness of those we cover, and the generally (sorry … ) lazy nature of some reporters, way too much of what gets covered in politics and government are the spoon-fed public events that the communications staffs want covered.
Even "enterprise" and investigative stories tend these days to come not from innovative shoe-leather work, but rather are generated (and often thoroughly researched by) interest groups, political actors, and other non-journalists who want to see a story come out.
For instance, journalists are now routinely relying on the Republican National Committee's missed vote tallies of the Democratic presidential candidates in stories about the subject, as opposed to keeping the records ourselves.
And we bet in almost every instance when the RNC numbers are used, there's no checking to make sure the tallies are correct.
On any given day when the Congress is out of session, how many reporters know what the Members they are assigned to cover are doing? ... [F]or every newsworthy evasive action we learn about (because the press gets tipped off or stumbles into something or finds something through hard work), there are literally thousands that never come to light.
Not that we didn't know the news was spoon-fed, but it's good to hear it said in the mainstream. Up with ABC! Down with Faux!
Personally, I think Vermont's "civil union" approach is good, because marriage has religious aspects I don't think the state should be getting into. That said, I know plenty of long-time gay couples, and it seems entirely unexceptionable to me that they should have "equal rights" for normal things like hospital visitation and inheritance. What could be possibly be the problem with that in a society with any concept of justice?
A fortunate 532 refugees found safe haven in Ivory Coast on Wednesday after a hasty evacuation from war-wracked Liberia and a 30-hour sea voyage. The French military led the multinational evacuation... It took out about 100 Americans and 80 French...
Today's column will explain why the job market feels a lot worse than the feds say it is.
Start with the 313,000 jobs that never existed. And the income that those 313,000 people were expected to have earned also never existed. The government discovered its error when it compared federal numbers with those being produced by the states.
But Washington says the size of these benchmark revisions will be reduced after it starts seasonally adjusting its figures each month.
I don't think so - because of another trick the Bureau of Labor Statistics is pulling.
Included in each month's jobs figures are estimates of jobs that the government believes are being created by new companies it can't prove exist.
This "plug" used to be called, of all things, the "bias factor."
In the old days, the "bias factor" never took jobs out of the economy - it only added them by accounting solely for new companies the government assumed it wasn't counting, instead of counting the bankrupt ones that were quietly disappearing and taking jobs with them.
Over time, bias factors added about as many jobs as Washington had to quietly remove in the annual benchmark revision.
This year the government has changed this "bias factor" - but only a little bit.
Nowadays this method can result in a reduction of jobs from the economy as it did last January when 156,000 "bias" jobs were taken out of the count.
But in the last three months, the government has been assuming job growth from these invisible companies.
In February, 63,000 of these mystery jobs were added; 115,000 were added in March and 176,000 in April.
I'm guessing that May will also be an add.
Too bad the unemployed can't get one of these non-existent jobs. That would make the economy a lot better - at least in everyone's imagination.
Florida... The budget... WMDs... Is a pattern emerging?
Analysts said it is "premature" to speculate that Freddie Mac’s problems will lead to a housing bubble collapse or a credit crunch in the mortgage industry.
Great. "Premature" sounds a lot like the "vote of confidence" a baseball manager gets before he's fired.
The budget: sleazy sunset provisions, dynamic scoring, and all that. WMDs: Faked letters, stuff by grad students found on the internet passed off as intelligence...
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- They're counted on by America's small towns to provide "oohs" and "ahhs" on the Fourth of July: private clubs, family gatherings, community picnics and the like.
But this year, unless they've kept abreast of new federal anti-terrorism rules, the only fireworks going off at such events are the kind you can buy at a roadside stand.
Under the federal Safe Explosives Act, aimed at improving homeland security, people wishing to put on large fireworks displays as of May 24 must have a permit from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
That entails a background check, fingerprinting and personal interviews with ATF agents, a process that can take as much as three months.
In Fairfield, Iowa, a 40-year tradition will end this Fourth of July when the sky above Fairfield Golf and Country Club stays dark.
"Every other year it was a simple process," said Pat Kessel, president of the country club's board. "We buy fireworks, get a shooter and have a display."
Told they would have to hustle through the permit process because they were late in applying, Kessel said they decided it just wasn't worth the hassle.
"Who wants to get fingerprinted to do that?" Kessel said. "I've been fingerprinted before. You go to the law center, have to buzz in and go to a back room just like a criminal. It's cold and military-like back there; it's not something I can see anybody wanting to do."
Great. aWol's (mal)Administration can't budget to protect airplanes from shoulder-fired missiles or the ports from dirty bombs in shipping containers, but they can make ordinary Americans feel like criminals.
Listen to what they say, or watch what they do? Which is more important?
Posted by Leah
Today's the day that Alabama Attorney General Wm Pryor's nomination to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals gets considered by the Senate Judicial Committee. This one doesn't come all that highly recommended. As Nina Totenberg, whom you can hear here or here, (scrowl down) noted on NPR's Morning Edition today: :
Pryor has been criticized for his anti-abortion stance, support of laws criminalizing homosexual conduct and opposition to laws aimed at protecting physical access for the disabled to public buildings.
I know there's a lot for all of us to keep track of, connected to, and outraged about, but what Bush could do to the courts is as big an issue as they come, and the Democrats are going to need our on-going encouragement to keep it from happening, fillibuster and all. Which reminds me, don't miss Nathan Newman's take on that subject, here, here, and here.
Posted by the farmer Mike's Salvage Station & Autobody Collision Repair, Faces Savage Lawsuit.
BELPRE, OHIO
Mike Weinerman, owner of "Mike Weinerman's Salvage Station" is perplexed by a recent lawsuit filed against him and his business by lawyers representing radio and television talk show host Michael Savage. Savage, whose other name is Michael Weiner, hosts a radio/television talk show called "Savage Nation", which airs on MSNBC. Mr. Savage is also the author of a book by the same name. Mr. Savage has taken offense to Mr. Weinerman's apparent disregard for his [Mr. Savage's] tender sensibilities.
"Who is this crank-case?" asked Mr. Weinerman. I'd never even heard of him until now, but he is convinced that I am a "grease monkey slut with a big cracked windshield". "What does that mean?" said Mr. Weinerman. Mr. Savage is also convinced that Mr. Weinerman is a "lesbian immigrant sewer nazi feminizing the American autobody repair business." "Well, what can ya do" remarked Mr. Weinerman, "the guy is clearly off his rocker panels. Someone's brake linings have worn thin, if ya know what I mean."
Savage accuses Mr. Weinerman of defaming his reputation by making a mockery of his show business trade names, "Mike Savage" and "Savage Nation". Savage's lawsuit seeks half a million dollars from the defendant for "deceptive trade practices" and "lost advertising contracts and business opportunities" due to Mr. Weinerman's reckless disregard for Mr. Savages celebrity and reputation.
According to Savage's lawyers, "Mike's Salvage Station" is an intentional attempt to profit from and defame Mr. Savage by capitalizing on Mr. Savage's celebrity and popularity while at the same time insinuating that he [Michael Savage] is in need of serious repair work. Or the equivalent of a collision damaged vehicle. "Wreckage, in need of serious repair" laughs Mr. Weinerman, "they may have point there." The suit also alleges that the name "Mike's Salvage Station" is intentionally, "confusingly similar" to "Mike's Savage Nation" and a clear attempt to damage Michael Savage's reputation and business interests by suggesting that both his book and the radio/television programs are, in the words of one source close to Mr. Savage, "just a bunch of junk. Fans of Mr. Savage's work may be confused by the similarities between Mr. Weinerman's business name and Mr. Savage's programs and begin to associate 'Savage Nation' with leaky radiators and flat tires and dented door panels, and even a dead battery" explained the source.
Mr. Weinerman wasn't impressed.
"I contacted Savage's legal representatives and told them that Mr. Weiner or Mr. Savage or whoever the hell he really is, was welcome to come out and see my place for himself. I'll show him around. Prove to him that I have no idea what on earth he's talking about and could care less about his savage silly assed car-radio talk show or his bigoted juvenile bleatings. But he apparently refused, claiming that I was attempting to lure him into my, '"little shop of crippled perversions"', and that I'd probably attempt to '"necklace"' him, '"just like they do in South Africa"'. I don't know what that means either, aside from a $15 dollar Casio watch, I don't even own any jewelry. The guy obviously has a leaky head gasket problem, or something worse."
When asked if he had ever watched or listened to Mr. Savage's program, Mr. Weinerman admitted, "yes, I've seen the show a couple of times since this ordeal began. The guy strikes me as someone who's misfiring on more than one cylinder, but I'd have to take a closer look. Other than that, the guy just looks like a hub-cap thief to me."
Mr. Savage could not be reached for comment.
warning: The above satirical material contains parodic and satirical ingredients. If taken literally, reader may become paranoid, disoriented, experience hallucinations of persecution, an irrational sense of self-righteous indignation, violent insanity, and other possible side effects . Do not operate a motor vehicle while under the influence of right wing talk radio.
Posted by Leah
Update: The Pandagon post referred to is here
Jesse Taylor at Pandagon posts, with exactly the right sense of dumbfounded outrage, a notable example of "wingnuttery" Hillary-loathing. That is it would be notable if the competition for most mendacious over the top Hillary-loathing weren't so intense.
This one is interesting because its author, Gregg Easterbrook isn't really rightwing, exactly. He's one of those wised-up, sorta liberal centrists; his speciality at The New Republic used to be apostate (why can't liberals admit they've won) coverage of the environment. But then it doesn't come as any sort of shock, does it, that Clinton-hating was and is a sport enjoyed by a vast conspiracy, oops, I mean majority of the mainstream media; hey, we're talking 97, 98% here.
Like most such commentators, Easterbrook's main point of outrage seems to be the pass he perceives that everyone else in the press is giving Hill's book, else he probably couldn't have been bothered to comment; her "mendacity," after all, is such old news, so pre-9/11.
Bill O'Reilly made a similar observation last night, after he'd demonstrated his own independence of mind in another of those fabulous Talking Points Memos of his. Of course his definition of media turned out to belimited to the three official interviews she'd sat down for, with Babs, Katie, and Larry. Still, to right the balance, Juanita Broddrick made an appearance. More about that later. (I know, that's so Josh Marshall of me)
Something I'd never have realized without Easterbrook's critical eye, the overuse of the word "exclusive," which has come to mean something different than "only," is all Hillary's doing.
And if you haven't had a chance to read the pass that Tom Shales gave Hillary re: her Barbara Walters' interview, don't miss it.
Enjoy your visit to Pandagon by reading Jessie's other posts; he's young, he's smart, he's talented, he's pre and post/9/11, he's got a great future in front of him, and he's a real deal liberal. He's what gives someone like me hope.
Posted by Lambert
Jules Witcover writes in the Baltimore Sun:
Understating the importance of the existence or absence of WMD at the time of the invasion won't settle the critical question of whether administration officials hyped government intelligence about the threat to win congressional support for launching pre-emptive war. Without WMD, what was being pre-empted?
E-mails to a columnist are hardly the equivalent of a Gallup poll, but mine have taken an interesting turn in recent weeks, from strong defenses of the president to questions about his rationale for the war.
One e-mailer writes: "You ask whether Bush's case was built on deception? Do Marylanders like crab cakes?"
Another asks: "If Bill Clinton was impeached because he lied about having sex with an intern, shouldn't George W. Bush also be impeached for the much more serious lie of inventing the case for war against Iraq out of whole cloth?"
Finally, another reader writes: "I find it odd that you do not utter the word 'impeach' in your articles. About the missing WMD which were the rationale for going to war in Iraq, Senator [Robert C.] Byrd is right to keep looking at the Constitution.
As Leah pointed out today, letters to the editor count. (Why do you think that the GOP Team Leader operatives give points for them? Though we hope it takes more to motivate a liberal than a beer cooler with a Grand Hypocrisy Party sticker on the side.)
Write your own letters (not Astroturf) to the editor. Call your Congressman. Talk to your neighbors. Wear an American flag lapel pin and a "Proud Liberal" t-shirt. Lots of people besides you want to know they aren't alone. The way to get the word out is to get the word out.
The release of the book, Living History ... set a one-day sales record for a non-fiction book in stores operated by Barnes & Noble. .... The volume beat the previous record for sale of a nonfiction book in a 24-hour period.
Posted by Potato Head
The Senate just rejected an effort to strip loan guarantees to the nuclear power industry, estimated at $16 billion, from the current energy bill. The loan-guarantee provision will put taxpayers on the hook for 50% of the cost of new nuclear plants in the event of default. The 50-48 vote was largely party line.
Why does the nuclear industry deserve this, you ask? Why, it's simple:
Industry representatives have argued that the government safety net is needed at least for the first group of reactors now that the electric power industry is in transition from highly regulated to competitive markets.
Got that? Because the energy industry got what it wanted--deregulation--we now have to protect them from the effects of deregulation.
Meanwhile, critics point out that, aside from the potential costs of the loan guarantees, this provision costs taxpayers $3.7 billion over 5 years in outright subsidies.
Taxpayers for Common Sense, a private advocacy group on tax issues... called the bill "one of the largest corporate welfare handouts in our nation's history."
Those of us without attention-deficit disorder may recall that sums of this magnitude made Trent Lott gag as he voted on the recent Child Tax Credit Extension, and were intolerable handouts to the undeserving poor in the view of Don Nickles and James M. Inhofe. All three voted for the loan guarantees.
It was not reported whether Trent made a gagging gesture while extending this handout to an industry that has never been able to survive unprotected in the marketplace.
The budgetary crisis at state and local level is causing these governments to look at open source, as opposed to proprietary, software solutions. (It's an ill wind...) This is, as Martha would say, A Good Thing.
Apologies if this is overly technical, but I see owning and controlling my own content on my own machine as a basic right. And the licensing terms for the latest OS from Microsoft, from what my friends tell me, are quite inimical to that.
A one-time congressional investigator of Bill and Hillary Clinton's Arkansas land deals won Senate confirmation on Monday as a federal appeals court judge, with the former first lady casting the lone vote against him.
[ Michael Chertoff] was Republican counsel to the Senate Whitewater investigation, which examined Clinton land dealings in Arkansas. ...
The probe found no criminal wrongdoing against the Clintons themselves in the Whitewater dealings.
But after an examination of his long legal career, Democrats and Republicans came together to support Chertoff.
Pimp for a groundless impeachment, get a lifetime appointment on the Federal bench! Tell me it's not a great country!
Now will the god of bad things please leave journalism alone for a while?
Sometimes, Maureen, bad things happen to people who do bad things.
It was a bad thing when kneepadding Times "journalists" served as cut-outs for the winger operatives who tried to bring Clinton down (in the impeachment saga) and democracy down (in Florida) .
And bad things should happen to "journalists" who do that, and the editors that enabled them. Sulzberger's got some housecleaning to do (let's start with Jeff Gerth!) and maybe when that's done, the god of bad things will let up a little.
However, there have been some critics -- all members of the press corps -- who have been extremely critical and virtually all of them were participants in the events described in The Clinton Wars and these critics have been self-defensive about their own actions involving what I consider either pseudo-scandals or serving as tools of right-wing operatives, Republican congressional staffers and/or Ken Starr's office.
"He came in here and he trashed the place and it's not his place.
David Broder represents everything that is wrong with Washington journalism. The idea that he would dare to discuss media arrogance after letting loose a comment like that is absolutely appalling.
The Times has had its comeuppance. Its sins are symptomatic of the press's inflated self-importance. The Times can lead the way back to trust -- if its publisher will.
Sulzberger could start by setting up an ombudsman to run a Truth Commission on the Times's shameful role in Whitewater and the ginned up Clinton "scandals" generally. Right now, they're just putting a band-aid on a cancer. Then, he could stop issuing kneepads to the newsroom, and get his paper to start covering breaking news again.
Would today's Times publish the Pentagon Papers, or even recognize them as a story? Of course not. More to the point, would they publish the 9/11 report aWol keeps trying to suppress?
Posted by Atrios
Thursday June 26 is now Savage the Savage Weiner day. All of us with websites should devote ourselves to appropriating Mikey Savage´s name for our own derisive purposes. Perhaps we can all call his radio show and get a few laughs that way too.
And, those without websites can help by submitting funny Michael Savage ¨fan fiction,¨ wonderful comic parodies of him, etc... etc...
Posted by Lambert
From Jerry Markon and Carrie Johnson and WaPo:
Federal prosecutors in Alexandria have opened a criminal investigation into alleged irregularities at mortgage giant Freddie Mac, two government officials with knowledge of the matter said yesterday.
Hope this doesn't affect the recovery I keep reading is about to happen. Reuters:
The housing market has been underpinning the economy. Very low rates have supported an unprecedented housing boom and a flood of refinancings, which have enabled consumers to cut their debt burden and free up cash for spending.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Guantanamo officials are working on plans to provide a courtroom, a prison and an execution chamber if the order comes to try terror suspects at the base in Cuba, the mission commander said.
Isolated on Cuba's eastern tip and out of the jurisdiction of U.S. civilian courts, Guantanamo is a likely location for U.S. military trials.
Some 680 detainees from 42 countries are in Guantanamo, categorized as unlawful combatants by the U.S. government. It has refused demands from human rights organizations to recognize them as prisoners of war. They have no constitutional rights as non-U.S. citizens being held outside U.S. territory, and none have been formally charged or allowed access to attorneys.
About five people have been drafting several plans for the last six months, he said. It was unclear how much money it would take to sustain such a permanent mission.
After the detention center opened in January 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld called the detainees "among the most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth." But, after lengthy interrogation, many are thought to be low-level former Taliban fighters and unlikely prospects for commission trials.
Of course, people like us could never be sent to our deaths before a military tribu -- not until Patriot II gives the executive the right to strip us of our citizenship, that is.
Microsoft Corp. said Tuesday it will acquire antivirus technology from a Romanian software company and develop its own antivirus product, stepping into a market it has long ceded to others specializing in software security.
One analyst, Michael Rasmussen at Forrester Research Inc., compared Microsoft's decision to "mafia-type" behavior of offering additional protection for customers who pay extra for it.
"The world does not want Microsoft to be a security vendor, it wants Microsoft to provide secure products," Rasmussen said.
The nice thing about being a convicted monopolist is that you never have to say you're sorry ...
Only hours after Rep. Roy Blunt was named to the House's third-highest leadership job in November, he surprised his fellow top Republicans by trying to quietly insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA into the 475-page bill creating a Department of Homeland Security, according to several people familiar with the effort.
The provision would have made it harder to sell tobacco products over the Internet and would have cracked down on the sale of contraband cigarettes, two practices that cut into Philip Morris's profits. Blunt has received large campaign donations from Philip Morris, his son works for the company in Missouri and the House member has a close personal relationship with a Washington lobbyist for the firm.
Now the cover up:
It is highly unusual for a House Republican to insert a last-minute contentious provision that has never gone through a committee, never faced a House vote and never been approved by the speaker or majority leader. Blunt's attempt became known only to a small circle of House and White House officials. They kept it quiet, preferring no publicity on a matter involving favors for the nation's biggest tobacco company and possible claims of conflicts of interest.
Even a House Republican can feel shame:
Several in that circle say they were struck by Blunt's willingness to go out on a limb for a company to which he has ties. What's more, he did it within hours of climbing to the House leadership's third-highest rung, a notable achievement for a man who came to Washington less than six years ago.
A senior Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said some GOP members worried at the time that it would be "embarrassing" to the party and its new whip if details of the effort were made public.
But Blunt thinks it's business as usual:
Blunt said his actions were no different than those of a member who successfully tucked a provision providing liability protections to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company into the same homeland security bill.
And Blunt's right! Republicans politicizing homeland security! I'm shocked, shocked!
Posted by Lambert AP did a count based on hospital records:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- At least 3,240 civilians died across Iraq during a month of war, including 1,896 in Baghdad, according to a five-week Associated Press investigation.
The count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll - if it is ever tallied - is sure to be significantly higher. ...
Posted by Leah
Spies threaten Blair with 'smoking gun' over Iraq
From the always invaluable Avedon Carol at The Sideshow we learn this:
Senior intelligence officers kept secret records of meetings after pressure from No 10
Intelligence officers are holding a "smoking gun" which proves that they were subjected to a series of demands by Tony Blair's staff in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The officers are furious about the accusation levelled by the Leader of the Commons, John Reid, that "rogue elements" are at work in the security services. They fear they are being lined up to take the blame for faulty intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.
The intelligence services were so concerned about demands made by Downing Street for evidence to use against Iraq that extensive files have been built up detailing communications with Mr Blair's staff.
Stung by Dr Reid's accusations about misinformation over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, intelligence officials have given veiled warnings about what may emerge in the two official inquiries into the affair.
"A smoking gun may well exist over WMDs, but it may not be to the Government's liking," said one senior source.
Guess that's what they mean about being careful what you wish for.
Wouldn't it be loverly if the papers over here were as independent as the Independent and the Telegraph, and the Guardian, and even the Times are over there.
And don't miss this testimoney about the value of writing letters to the editor.
The Daily Distopian, a blog for the disillusioned, catches Joe Scarborough, via Bartcop Forum, sharing a laugh with Don Imus about that dead interm from Joe's past, and provides a link for you to listen, too. (Patience required, link takes a while to load)
Posted by Atrios
This review of Hillary´s book is really incredible. You really don´t even know where to begin. One of my readers offers up this letter to letters@nytimes.com.
Dear Editor,
Lining the cat-litter pan with the latest bilge from Michiko Kakutani would be an insult to my cat.
In the first four (short) paragraphs, Ms. Kakutani manages to blame the victims, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, twice for an orchestrated and wholly undeserved campaign of lies and evasions, directed at, not by, them.
She goes on to blame Mrs. Clinton for "skim[ming] over details of matters like Whitewater and 'travelgate'". Given the tone of this less-than-balanced review, one can be left with little doubt that should Mrs. Clinton have addressed these issues in sufficient detail for Ms. Kakutani, she would then have accused Mrs. Clinton of protesting too much.
It is a fact, Kauktani nothwithstanding, that Whitewater (a $40,000 investment) was investigated by the RTC, and by no less than three independent counsels, at an expense far above 50 million dollars, with no findings against the Clintons. "Travelgate" contained even less, if it's possible to imagine such a thing, liability or wrongdoing on their part. The Clintons were thus unfairly called--more than the two times Kakutani specifically mentions, I might add--to respond to ridiculous and unfounded charges.
There, Ms. Kakutani; there's the detail you called for.
Posted by the farmer "This was a program that was built for concealment," - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Dear Americans and Liberalist enemies of the National Secuity State,
Your Victorious Leader, President George W. Dewey Bush, - masculine commander and hero of our glorious defeat of the Iraqi Navy during the battle for Manilla Bay - has consulted with many experts and insiders and other adults from all over the world, including the United States and Texas, and on August 16, 2002 made it perfectly plain spoken clear why a "regime change" in Iraq was necessary.
"There should be no doubt in anybody's mind this man [Saddam Hussein] is thumbing his nose at the world,..." - GWB, Crawford Community Center, Crawford, Texas - August 16, 2002
There you have it. The President has spoken. I do not see any mention of weapons of mass destruction in that statement. The real reason for "regime change" in Iraq is found in our presidents 17 word address to the nation above. It was about "nose thumbing" all the time. All this talk about, "where are the weapons of mass destruction", or "were there any weapons of mass destruction", or "will there be any weapons of mass destruction found in the future", and on and on. Who cares if anyone said there were any, and who cares if anyone said there weren't. For God sake,... can't we all just keep things simple around here.
This is the deal. As follows - in order of importance.
#1- Nose thumbing. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin incident? That was an international nose thumbing incident that appeared on radar. In the middle of the night. In the middle of the Gulf of Catalina, where Ho Chi Minh's navy attempted to establish a beachhead at San Clemente. If Lyndon Johnson hadn't listened to his military intelligence experts and close inside advisers from the United States and Texas, Richard Nixon never would have been able to end the Vietnam War. Consider how many more Americans and innocent Vietnamese civilians, held prisoner by their own people, would have died had Richard Nixon never become president and had the wherewithal to do whatever he pleased. So does it really matter if the Gulf of Tonkin incident happened or not? Of course not.
A little nose thumbing here, a little nose thumbing there... next thing you know you've got a running nose thumbing pandemic spreading around the globe. The running nose thumbing "drip effect". And it will eventually spread like a rogue nose thumbing fifth column Stalinist domino-virus. Nothing short of nasal warfare, reaching around the world. Fouling all innocent freedom loving peoples in emerging democracies like Belarus and Singapore and Texas and even within the United States itself. Can't have it. Lines in the sandbox must be drawn.
I myself recently received a nose thumbing (in a manner of speaking) from a disgruntled liberalist driving one of those french fry oil powered cars, and found the experience so humiliating and potentially dangerous that I tracked the treasonous proboscis abusing menace to the parking lot of a vegetarian restaurant, confronted him with his crimes against freedom and dragged him screaming from his greasy enviro-terrorist crockpot while thrashing him about the head and torso with a rolled up copy of the September 2002 issue of the American Sons of Liberty Magazine. Then I stood over him pounding my chest and quoting Thomas Jefferson, "we will not accept being transported to France by liberals driving a featherbed!" Rooting evil from within, wherever and whenever it presents itself, is the preemptive strike civil defense Homeland security obligation of every real American patriot. Chest thumping good. Nose thumbing bad. Got it?
"There should be no doubt in anybody's mind this man [Saddam Hussein].....that he desires weapons of mass destruction. " -GWB, Crawford Community Center, Crawford, Texas - August 16, 2002
#2 - Wanton unchecked desire. I don't think I need to overstate the awesome power of wanton unchecked desire do I? I didn't think so. And hasn't Rick Santorum (R-Deuteronomy) alerted us all to the chilling consequences of such wanton appetite? Wherever you find unchecked desire you find trouble in the neighborhood. Hazardous cavalier often fatal misuse of gasoline products, weapons of mass, or even occasional sporadic destruction, man on dog tea dances, and countless nose thumbing disorders resulting from the immigration of swarthy nose thumbing heroin dealers into our country. Hey!.....you out there, you with the box of orange pekoe, unhand that cocker spaniel you deranged fiend....and don't you thumb your nose at me!
Remember to heed the words of the great Sen. John Warner, (R- Virginia Colony), "continue to repose trust in the administration"
As the folk singer Ted Nugent allegedly once remarked, "God guns and greed made America. Lets keep all three."
Yours in Victory,
Col. Harden Long, foreign policy intelligence consultant and industrial magnate.
PS: My apologies for the outburst above ......now then, where are those nose thumbing photos I was working on with.
Posted by Leah
When Fred Hyatt, editor of the Op-Ed page of the Washington Post can get away with a paragraph like this:
“In the end, though, those who hope the terrorist threat has been overstated are likely to be as disappointed as those who believe Saddam Hussein had no chemical or biological weapons program. Given the catastrophic damage that a small group could wreak with a biological agent or nuclear weapon, and the hatred of the West still being taught in schools in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and elsewhere, today’s vigilance is preferable to yesterday’s complacency, and the reorientation Bush imposed after 9/11 was as justified as it was belated.”
Eric Alterman explains why, and why "Democracy Demeaned Is Democracy Denied."
"Democracy is not a lie" – I first learned that from Henry Demarest Lloyd, the progressive journalist whose book, "Wealth against Commonwealth," laid open the Standard trust a century ago. Lloyd came to the conclusion to "Regenerate the individual is a half truth. The reorganization of the society which he makes and which makes him is the other part. The love of liberty became liberty in America by clothing itself in the complicated group of strengths known as the government of the United States." And it was then he said: "Democracy is not a lie. There live(s) in the body of the commonality unexhausted virtue and the ever-refreshed strength which can rise equal to any problems of progress. In the hope of tapping some reserve of their power of self-help," he said, "this story is told to the people."
This is your story – the progressive story of America.
Posted by Leah Hesiod continues to do God's work, keeping track of Professor Glen's dissembling.
OFFENSIVE INSTAHACKERY OF THE DAY: Now...it's hard for me to choose just which of Insty's ridiculous, poorly-reasoned, snippy, and offensive posts to highlight today.
But, I've managed to narrow it down to just two.
Both are duckpit-qualified.
Hesiod does his usual expert job eviscerating the Professor's turkeys, and even more interestingly, argues persausively that had Instanpundit been writing then, when he first began, the way he is now, like a confirmed neocon, no one but other neocons would have paid any attention.
Posted by Atrios The truth is, the anti-war position was never a ¨liberal¨position, really. However, it was convenient to paint it as such in order to identify the true enemy of the Bush administration - Democrats. But, in any case, FAIR tells us how the liberal media presented the war to us:
Of a total of 840 U.S. sources who are current or former government or military officials, only four were identified as holding anti-war opinions--Sen. Robert Byrd (D.-W.V.), Rep. Pete Stark (D.-Calif.) and two appearances by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio). Byrd was featured on PBS, with Stark and Kucinich appearing on Fox News.
Posted by Atrios John Lott, not Trent. John Lott is still pushing his fraudulent work on the Florida election fiasco. I´ve posted on this a bunch of times, but let me just say that his election work makes his gun work look like brilliant airtight scholarship. His election work is full of deception that a first year econometrics student could spot.
In any case, I hadn´t realized this nonsense had actually made its way into what I assume is a reputable journal - the Journal of Legal Studies (January 2003). Now, I haven´t actually read this work but I did read his report to Congress on this issue from which it is derived.
Lott gives right wing hacks a bad name, and man is that hard.
But for branding honest skeptics as cowardly appeasers, Kristol and his ilk will owe many apologies if, as he now worries, those vaunted weapons are never found.
I didn´t think Saddam was a threat and I didn´t think going to war would make it safer to be an American in this world. I think at this point we can be pretty certain that my first belief was essentially correct. There really will never be any way to prove that my second belief was or wasn´t correct.
But, in any case, Instahack and the rest of the Bush sycophants declared us ¨objectively pro-Saddam.¨ The supposedly level-headed Eugene Volokh wrote ¨future history¨piece in which appeasers like me won and Saddam blows up a major American city or two.
Who knows, maybe war was a good thing. All I know is lots of coalition forces are dead. Thousands of Iraqis are dead, by whatever measure, with more kids being liberated from their existence every day. (You try living without fresh water or an adequate sewage system in 100 degree heat for a little while - see how long your kids last).
If, as Kristol now says, the war was prudent but not urgent then the fact the administration triply scewed the pooch on this one is unassailable. If there was no rush, then they could have been far more organized to deal with the aftermath.
Ever since the tragedy of Sept. 11, the Bush administration has relied on selective and distorted intelligence data to make the case for invading Iraq. But the truth will out, and the White House is now scrambling to explain away its mendacity.
On Sunday, Condoleezza Rice admitted that President Bush had used a forged document in his State of the Union speech to prove Iraq represented a nuclear threat: "We did not know at the time — maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency — but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course it was information that was mistaken."
United Nations inspectors, belatedly presented with the same document, realized within hours it was a crude forgery.
Wolf's not sure. He wants to know what you think. So far 79% say "Yes." Go, educate him.
And while you're there, take a look at the current "Blitzer Report" for such scintillating and fresh information about Hillary Clinton as....
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Like almost everything else that Hillary Clinton has done in recent years, her new book, "Living History," is generating lots of controversy. As all of us know, she is a very controversial political figure. Most public opinion polls show she remains a very divisive personality. People tend to either love or hate her.
It shouldn't, therefore, be all that surprising that her recollection of the Monica Lewinsky episode has generated some conflicting reactions.
Can't argue with that, can you? :
Her supporters, including her former press secretary, Lisa Caputo, defend Hillary across the board. Why did Sen. Clinton have to revive the painful issue right now at a time when most people had gotten over it? "She really wanted to write this book, as practically all First Ladies do," Caputo told me.
But how many other former First Ladies have had to write about their husbands' infidelities in the White House? And her critics charge the $8 million advance and her presidential ambition were behind the decision.
Ah, ever the gentleman. I understand. A tough reporter like Wolf can't afford to be a gentleman.
On one of the most important questions raised in the book, her supporters and critics often disagree -- namely, on whether she should have remained married to Bill Clinton after he confessed of his relationship with Lewinsky. Many critics say she should have left him, charging that the only reason she stayed married was out of political necessity.
When writing achieves a certain level of dumbness, it becomes inarguable.This "book report" wouldn't pass muster in a good high school English class.
Posted by Lambert
Thanks, FCC! I'm happy to contribute my little mite.
If you own a cable modem, expect a substantial increase in your monthly rates if a proposal currently before the Federal Communications Commission goes forward.
About 85 percent of the fund's revenues are split between two causes: the "e-rate" program (40 percent), which subsidizes school and library Internet connections, and rural telephone companies (45 percent), which might otherwise end up paying more for telephone service than city dwellers. The remaining 15 percent goes toward discounts to low-income subscribers and funds rural health care.
Blame politicians from rural states--like Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who heads the appropriations committee, along with Republican Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana, who heads the communications subcommittee. Stevens, Burns and other rural-state politicians vie to find new excuses to increase Universal Service Fund-related taxes.
Heath care and libraries? Fine, though it would make more sense to use general revenues instead of hidden user fees. But rural telephone companies? More Red state subsidies. Let 'em vote something toward keeping dirty bombs out of shipping containers in the port cities of the Blue states. Then we'll talk.
Posted by Atrios
It´s a sweet little game. Leak a story to the press, have them publish it, and then cite that story to bolster your own case. Who could I be talking about other than the lovely Judith Miller?
Take the case of staff reporter Judith Miller, who covers the atomic bomb/chemical-weapons-fear beat, and hasn't heard a scare story about Iraq that she didn't believe, especially if leaked by her White House friends. On Sept. 8, 2002, Ms. Miller and her colleague Michael Gordon helped co-launch the Bush II sales campaign for Saddam-change with a front page story about unsuccessful Iraqi efforts to purchase 81-mm aluminum tubes, allegedly destined for a revived nuclear weapons program.
Pitched to a 9/11-spooked public and a gullible, cowardly U.S. congress, the aluminum tubes plant was a big component of the "weapons of mass destruction" canard, which resulted in hasty House and Senate war authorization on Oct. 11.
Months later, when the tubes connection was thoroughly discredited (UN weapons inspectors past and present said the tubes were intended for conventional rocket production), the Times did not think it necessary to run a clarification. Nor was Ms. Miller disciplined for shoddy work; on the contrary, when the A-bomb threat had faded, the Bush administration astutely shifted the media's focus to chemical and biological weapons -- and Ms. Miller fell into line with the program.
When these non-nuclear weapons proved elusive after the fall of Baghdad, she placed herself at the service of what I call the Pentagon's pretext verification unit. In her first postwar dispatch, again deemed front-page news, she wrote about a man claiming to be an "Iraqi scientist" with knowledge about destroyed chemical weapons. The problem was, Ms. Miller didn't interview the gentleman, didn't learn his name and agreed to have her story censored by the U.S. army under the terms of her "accreditation."
Thus, the reader wasn't even told what chemicals or weapons materials the "scientist" was alleged to have known about. Readers were told that the man had to remain anonymous in order to protect him from reprisal (despite regime change). What Ms. Miller did reveal (besides her censorship contract) was that she witnessed "from a distance" a man in a baseball cap pointing "to several spots in the sand," where he claimed the awful stuff was buried. This would be laughable if it hadn't help pave the way for war and the subversion of democracy.
When officials leak a "fact" to Ms. Miller, they then can cite her subsequent stenography in the Times as corroboration of their own propaganda, as though the Times had conducted its own independent investigation. On Sept. 8, Dick Cheney cited the Times's aluminum tubes nonsense on Meet the Press to buttress his casus belli.
"Still, Gerth called the FBI office in Little Rock to inform an agent there of what Hale was saying about Clinton. The agent sent a teletype to Washington: "Gerth alluded that this is why the US Attorney Casey would not deal with Coleman when he was attempting to work a suitable deal for his client"
That in itself is a bigger violation of journalistic ethics than anything Jayson Blair could muster up in a lifetime.
Posted by Atrios
In a just world, one where Jayson Blair wasn´t thought to be the Biggest Journalism Scandal Ever, someone like David Bossie wouldn´t be allowed to show his face anywhere but Fox News. One could write volumes about this guy´s dishonesty, but the most obvious one was the time he doctored some audiotapes of Web Hubbell while working for Dan Burton.
This exchange between Lockhart and Bossie, with the pathetic Judy Woodruff playing ¨referee,¨ shows everything that´s wrong with political journalism. As Lockhart points out, it is factually undisputable that the Clintons did absolutely nothing wrong with Whitewater. Bossie just splutters that they´re liars, and Woodruff intones that this fight will continue. No, Judy, it isn´t a fight. It isn´t a disagreement. On one side you have a liar, and one side you have someone telling the truth.
David Brock admitted to being a liar, while David Bossie forced others to prove it. For some reason, David Brock´s admission means that everything he says is qualified with ¨well, he lied once so who knows if he´s lying now...¨ David Bossie gets to go on with a regular pundit-for-hire gig, while Judy Woodruff hangs on his every word.
Posted by Atrios Daily Kos has set up a system with the DNC through which his readers can contribute and Kos gets ¨credit¨ (in the vanity sense, not in any financial sense). I like it - it´s a pretty good idea. The folks behind Dean Meetup (and Congrats to Kos also for getting paid real money to consult for Dean) requested that their members add $.01 to every donation to signal the source - and that did get the attention of the Dean campaign.
I´d like to do something similar once the campaign season heats up. My preference would be to find a winnable (but not safe) House race where a few thousand bucks could really make a difference and adopt a ¨pet candidate¨ for the website. But, that´s a few months off. Until then, go give money to the DNC through Kos and demonstrate the power of his Blogs.
Posted by Lambert
Move along people! No history here! Sean Wilentz has some new perspectives on Blumenthal's book in (do the clickthrough) Salon:
Now an extraordinary thing has happened. Journalists from across the political spectrum are finally acknowledging that impeachment was mostly a partisan crusade on trumped-up charges to bring down a popular president. "From the viewpoint of history," the conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote recently in the New York Observer, "it's going to seem deranged." They have conceded that numerous allegations noisily leveled against Clinton and repeated endlessly in the news media of which they are a part have turned out to be bogus. [But]Even as journalists admit that Blumenthal has the goods to prove what a right-wing circus impeachment really was, they dismiss his revelations as score-settling, and worse -- as "history."
"History," forsooth? These crooks all got promotions and now they're running the country!
Four examples: One of the chief members of the "cabal of right-wing fanatics" was Theodore Olson, who, as counsel to the rabidly right-wing American Spectator, oversaw the notorious Arkansas Project that spread some of the most vicious lies about Clinton. (Olson was also one of the supposedly impartial "experts" who signed the petition attacking the historians in 1998.) In testimony before the Senate, Olson denied any involvement in the Project -- but that testimony was later fully documented as false. Yet Olson is now solicitor general of the United States ... Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas did more than any House Republican to coerce his colleagues into supporting impeachment. In 1998, Bret Kavanaugh ... coauthored the salacious so-called Starr Report .... Today, Bret Kavanaugh is deputy legal counsel at the Bush White House. In 1995, Michael Chertoff was chief counsel for Sen. Alphonse D'Amato's Senate Whitewater Committee that churned endless baseless allegations against the Clintons. Since then, he has ...been nominated by George W. Bush to the federal bench.
Gosh, wonder if our gutless Beltway Dems are filibustering Chertoff?
Posted by Lambert
Remember Al Quaeda? Thought so. And they remember us:
UNITED NATIONS - There is a "high probability" that al-Qaida will attempt an attack with a weapon of mass destruction in the next two years, the U.S. government said in a report Monday.
The report to a U.N. Security Council committee monitoring sanctions against the terrorist group did not say where the Bush administration believes such an attack might be launched.
But the United States said it believes that despite recent setbacks, "al-Qaida maintains the ability to inflict significant casualties in the United States with little or no warning."
Any idea where AQ might get the radioactive material for a dirty bomb? Why, from unguarded, looted sites in Iraq, of course! From the British military analyist Janes:
The chaos in Iraq is creating the kind of environmental and security risks previously seen only in the territories of the former Soviet Union after 1991.
The Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility, another important nuclear site that has been looted, houses the remains of the Osirak reactor bombed by Israel in 1981 and the USA during the 1991 Gulf war. It contains spent reactor fuel, as well as radioactive isotopes including caesium and cobalt - materials that could be used by terrorists for making radiological dispersal devices (commonly known as 'dirty bombs'). Terrorists could obtain the material either directly or from looters selling material on the black market.
Posted by Lambert
Paul Cafera writes in Salon (go on, do the one-day pass):
When al-Qaida terrorists in Kenya failed in their effort to shoot down an Israeli charter jet with a shoulder-launched missile last November, airline security experts were relieved, but only briefly. Such an attack had long been expected, and though the missile missed its target that day, the experts urged that the near-miss be regarded as a wakeup call to airlines and governments worldwide.
A little more than six months later, the administration of President George W. Bush is making only a limited commitment to reduce the threat of shoulder-launched missiles, and critics both inside and outside the government say he is putting both passengers and the airline industry at risk.
The administration recently blocked two congressional measures to address the threat, including a comprehensive $9 billion plan to begin outfitting passenger jets with sophisticated anti-missile equipment. Instead, a new report by Bush's Department of Homeland Security says the administration is proposing a timetable in which the study and planning would not be completed until 2005, and the first widespread installation of anti-missile technology would be years away, at best. Only $2 million would be spent in the next few months to assemble staff and data on the risk posed by portable missiles; up to $60 million would be allocated next year to continue the study.
Those most familiar with the danger, regardless of political stripe, agree that the missiles pose a significant, immediate threat. Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican who chairs the House aviation subcommittee, has called the risk "sobering," and at a Washington news conference in March, he said: "We can't afford to not act." A Boeing official privately described the shoulder-launched missiles as "the greatest current threat to the U.S. air transport system." Over the past year, intelligence officials have grown increasingly concerned about the likelihood that al-Qaida has smuggled the launchers into the United States. The FBI in May 2002 issued a remarkable bulletin to local and state law enforcement agencies warning that al-Qaida possessed such missiles and would likely attempt an attack inside the United States.
Why on earth would the Administration and its friends not regard airline security as important? (Did they just "forget," as with the reconstruction funding for Afghanistan?) Maybe it's because they normally fly from government airfields or in private planes; the fear that the proles feel is not for them, and so they cannot identify with it and don't see it as important.
Dishonest salesmanship has been the hallmark of the Bush administration's approach to domestic policy. And it has become increasingly clear that the selling of the war with Iraq was no different.
For example, look at the way the administration rhetorically linked Saddam to Sept. 11. As The Associated Press put it: "The implication from Bush on down was that Saddam supported Osama bin Laden's network. Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks frequently were mentioned in the same sentence, even though officials have no good evidence of such a link." Not only was there no good evidence: according to The New York Times, captured leaders of Al Qaeda explicitly told the C.I.A. that they had not been working with Saddam.
Or look at the affair of the infamous "germ warfare" trailers. I don't know whether those trailers were intended to produce bioweapons or merely to inflate balloons, as the Iraqis claim — a claim supported by a number of outside experts. (According to the newspaper The Observer, Britain sold Iraq a similar system back in 1987.) What is clear is that an initial report concluding that they were weapons labs was, as one analyst told The Times, "a rushed job and looks political." President Bush had no business declaring "we have found the weapons of mass destruction."
Meanwhile, our supine media has begun to wake from slumber and to realize there is actually a story here that the American people might want to read. AP:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. military units assigned to track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting time off or being assigned to other duties...
The slowdown comes after checks of more than 230 sites — drawn from a master intelligence list compiled before the war — turned up none of the chemical or biological weapons the Bush administration said it went after Saddam Hussein to destroy.
Still, President Bush insisted Monday that Baghdad had a program to make weapons of mass destruction. "Intelligence throughout the decade shows they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced that with time, we'll find out they did have a weapons program," he said.
The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said work will resume at a brisk pace once its 1,300-person Iraq Survey Group takes over.
Ahead of the war, planners were so certain of the intelligence that the weapons teams were designed simply to secure chemical and biological weapons rather than investigate their whereabouts, as U.N. inspectors had done.
"Faith," says the Bible, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb.11:1). It's starting to look like aWol took us to war based on faith, not on fact.
Posted by Leah
Michael Powell says that the FCC may be the most lobbied agency in Washington and thinks that may not be entirely a good thing. The lobbying he appears to have in mind are the million plus messages protesting the Chairman and his Republican cohorts' proposed lossening of media ownership rules sent by grassroots American citizens, whose only stake in the ruling was the fact that they're the "public" whose "interest" Mr. Powell and his fellow commission members are supposed to be looking out for, they own the public airwaves, they pay Powell's salary, and they are what puts the democratic in democracy.
Chairman Powell appears to be a great deal less concerned about any undue influence that might have been exerted on his decision by those handful of conglomerates who had everything to gain from the proposed rules changes.
Changing Michael Powell's mind was probably a hopeless task. Trying to wasn't. It got a shamelessly ignored story on front pages and cable news; it forced the issue into the public consciousness, and to the mainstream media's great surprise, people didn't like what they were hearing enough to make some public noise about it.
Not that the Republican wing of the FCC gave two hoots about what anything as amorphous as "the public" thought.
Congress cares. And Congress can overturn the ruling.
June 19th is the magic date That's when John McCain has scheduled a committee vote on legislation that would override the FCC ruling.
Not a lot of time. But enough
What's needed is a deluge of calls, emails, faxes, and postcards to committee members, and also to your own Senators and Representative, who are especially sensitive to constituent opinion.
Check out MoveOn for information about how to contact members of Congress. Or visit Lisa at Ruminate This, which is fast becoming a one stop help center for citizen activism, as well as being one of the wittiest and best looking blogs going; she has a toll-free number up for contacting Congress.
This is possible. This we can do. And beyond the value of slamming the brakes on media consolidation, the unprecedented success of a grassroots movement in getting Congress to say "no" to deregulation could change the dynamic of the mainstream media's discussion of the Bush domestic agenda.
Some of this was discussed at the excellent Media Forum of the Take Back America/Conference for America's future, televised by C-Span last Friday, and again Sunday evening. Eric Alterman, Farai Chideya, and John Moyers were all as terrific as you would expect. Jeff Chester of the Center For Digital Democracy was a revelation about what's at stake in the new architect of the internet, and Dan Carol of Carol/Trevelyan Strategy Group was inspiring in his broadening of the definition media. Turns out we have more power than we realize, but we better figure out how to use it, else we'll lose it.
If you missed the broadcast, check out the streaming Video at C-Span. I can't help you with a link because my bad tech karma is always exceptionally high when I try and access anything at C-Span. (Once, while there, my Real Player just disappeared)
Posted by Leah
Update: Corrected Link. Sorry about that.
If you haven't yet checked out Zizka's revamped, now eponymous "Zizka," do so. You'll find all manner of interesting stuff about what liberals need to learn, come to terms with, and get done. (Some I plan a future differing with, but all are well worth reading and thinking about)
And if any of you missed this when Digby recommended it, be sure to check out the twelve reasons Zizka's not much fun anymore.
Posted by Atrios
Ah, remember when Tim Russert used to lovingly babble on and on about quids and pros and quos in bizarre language constructions...over Democrats of course. I see quids and pros and quos here:
Prominent Democrats and a consumer advocacy organization yesterday called on the Justice Department to investigate $56,500 in campaign contributions by a Kansas-based energy company that had sought a "seat at the table" as key Republicans worked out details of the Bush administration's energy bill.
The money went to political groups associated with GOP leaders, including Rep. Joe Barton (Tex.), who inserted a provision to exempt the company, Westar Energy Inc., from a troublesome federal regulation, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) The provision was later withdrawn after Westar became the subject of a federal investigation of the company's practices. In e-mails, company officials had written of a plan "for participation" in the legislation and had said that Barton and other GOP lawmakers had requested the contributions.
"These allegations should be fully investigated. If DeLay and other members of Congress did agree to sell political access, they should be prosecuted for violating bribery laws," said former Vermont governor Howard Dean, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.
"It is a serious federal crime for anyone to promise any public benefit 'provided for or made possible in a whole or in part by any act of Congress as consideration for any political activity or for the support of any candidate,' " Democratic Party Chairman Terence McAuliffe said yesterday in a letter to Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, requesting an investigation.
Posted by Atrios
I´d heard about the defection of NH state rep Corey Corbin to the Democratic party, but initial reports such as this one didn´t mention what may have been the primary reason - or at least the last straw - little Ricky Santorum´s bigotry.
Posted by Atrios Bill Frist´s minor son was arrested for DUI and possession of alcohol. Let´s be thankful no one was hurt, and hope that no special treatment is obtained here. If I were writing for the liberal equivalent of the Corner I´d be sure to include some snarky comments about the failure of conservative parenting and values in our society. If I were writing for the actual Corner I´d find a way to blame the Clenis.
Posted by Atrios
Mikey Weiner, who has his little feelings hurt because some people like to mock that horrible bigot, has sued a few websites. Go read this editorial from Take Back the Media on the subject and then you can maybe go hunt around the web and find those always reliable libertarian-conservative defenders of free speech and ask them why they aren´t more interested in this. It is at least as important as some anonymous guy with a sign somewhere who thinks Bush is a Nazi.
PRESS RELEASE update:
re: Dynamic Anti Rove Propaganda Assimilation Systems (DARPAS).
DARPAS early warning "GOPlie Detection Assessment and Management" initiative, or GOP-DAM, as it's referred to by insiders - announces plans for the future testing and release of its LieLog(tm) "ontology-based (sub) system-branch" technology.
LieLog(tm), a proposed "digital super diary" software program capable of measuring the evasions, half-truths, concoctions, fabrications, heroic fictions, frauds, fakery, misinformation, misrepresentations, distortions, falsifications, slanders, sleights of hand, stage managed leadership cult pageants and other deceptive "transactional data streams" spewing from Bush administration officials, Right Wing Think Tank smokestacks, bewitched media wind-chimes and borderline homicidal locos who are apparently serious when they says stuff like this: "It will be the death of this country when hot-blooded, Latin-American macho people bomb the crap out of China or whomever gets in their way...".
DARPAS technicians, working with software engineers from the VLWC, Alterman Research Labs, the Janeane Garofalo Project for a New Century, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have been conducting beta testing of the LieLog(tm) system.
Final release and implementation of the system is slated for later this year or early next year. Engineers explain that this new "cognitive" technology is just the tool for uprooting rogue "cognitive dissonance". Thereby making it possible to detect, isolate, and catalog vast amounts of "episodic memory" relating to everything from disseminated Defense Department fabrications to simple minded bald faced twaddle. Mysterious lurid tales of menacing WMD's poised to pounce and twisted fuzzy-math economic sorceries will be flushed out like grouse from a stand of hawthorn.
The system has even further implications for the media, explain experts. For instance, by feeding a small sensor device into a hole in the back of a test subject's head, and attaching it to the lower cranial nerve, scientists and technicians can monitor the test subject's physical activity around the clock. Technicians using a test dummy's head such as the one attached to the thorax of that shifty MSNBC GOP anchor-operative Joe Scarborough, or a self aggrandizing gawk like Michael Savage, can record and monitor the subjects televised burblings and obloquies using the LieLog(tm) falsification detection software. These same programmers and research personnel - working deep inside the DARPAS Iron Mountain research facility near Monticello, NY - will then be able to instantly capture, analyze and isolate each greasy Savage squirm or split second reptilian flick of the Scarborough tongue, before either have a chance to slither off into the ether unaccountable for their own slippery residue trail.
Deceptions and dissemblances and outright verbal hooey, including physical mannerisms such as flatulence, sneers, twitching eye movements, and other jerking motions will all be processed, analyzed, and entered into a permanent database for future study by anthropologists and historians.
LieLog(tm) will also feature a LieLog(tm) early warning, "Lie - On The Ground!" warning/notification service. Alerts will be fed via wireless digital uplink to a NOAA weather satellite orbiting the sun, bounced back to a Alterman Labs mobile relay station hidden in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, and forwarded to media and emergency GOPlie management officials nationwide. The moment a GOP lie/spin-rotation event is detected a watch alert is issued, followed by a "Lie - On The Ground!" early detection warning. Both will be broadcast to the public via television, radio, and specialized emergency management early warning GOPlie tracker networks across the country and around the world.
"Yes sir", remarked one unnamed expert source, "If Dick Cheney wants to run around his secret undisclosed bunker location wearing nothing but a Bora Bora Booney hat and a pair of underpants pulled up over his nipples, yelling… 'I've got your weapon of mass destruction right here baby!'… well then, we'll all know about it."
Bush administration officials and GOP operatives posing as mainstream journalists were clearly shocked by the announcement that such a system was even being developed. White House spokesperson and free press advocate Ari Fleischer responded immediately to news of the DARPAS project by announcing, "Thats it! I will not be subjected to further encroachments on my freedom and privacy. I quit. I'm outta here in a month."
Other Bush administration officials expressed anger at the news. Attorney General John Ashcroft, voice quivering like a plucked harpsichord string, stated, "We will not tolerate the trickeries of Mammon. My sins are held in sacred trust between the Almighty and myself! There is nothing in the Bible or the US Constitution that says it is wrong or dishonest to lie on behalf of the one Lord and Savior and the higher Laws of God and the Christian Nation our founding fathers envisioned!"
Sean Hannity, FoxNewsCorpGOPClearChannels on-air hood ornament, demanded a full-scale military ground and air assault be launched immediately against Clinton Corners, NY. Just because.
Andrew Sullivan, sniffing a fifth column countermine in the wind, was reportedly sighted crossing the border into Quebec from New Hampshire, just north of Canaan, with a French Canadian mink trapper named Jules Petain who he'd met earlier in the week while vacationing in Provincetown. An eyewitness who allegedly spoke with the pair near Wallace Pond suggested that the two may be fleeing westward to join the Northern Homeland Conservatives and Sons of Saxony Resistance Front, alleged to be active in British Columbia.
Some close to the White House dismissed alarmist concerns about the DARPAS technology. When asked what Mr. Bush's response was to the press release, one official close to Mr. Bush remarked, "I don't think Mr. Bush is concerned. I don't think he's even read a press release. Mr. Rumsfeld presented the President with a set of complex problems to work with earlier in the day and the President has been very very busy all afternoon trying to fit the pieces together on behalf of our humble national salvation."
Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch - just, "your regular, ordinary billionaire media mogul", could not be reached for comment. But a nervous representative for Murdoch's NewsCorp seemed concerned when she indicated that the "regular, ordinary billionaire media mogul" guy was laying low at a remote undisclosed hotel ski resort location somewhere in central Italy's Arbruzzi mountains. Apparently waiting to be rescued by Michael Powell and a "mission redefined" FCC Special Operations commando unit known as the Jagdverbande.
What was it songwriter Paul Simon said all those years ago? Oh yeah. Something about,"soldiers by the side of the road" and "the dead sand falling on the children" and "the mothers and the fathers and the automatic earth" - and "the way we look to a distant constellation, dying in a corner of the sky" / "a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" / miracles and wonders and "the long distance call" / cameras following us in "slo-mo" / "staccato signals of constant information"... and a bomb, in a baby carriage,... "wired to the radio".
Posted by Lambert
They elected a gay bishop. If Jesus sits down to dinner with prostitutes, tax collectors, me, and you, then he sits down to dinner with gays, too.
But I was pleased to see that the Stagecraft Administration has already set up the "money shot" for this peace conference, whether any progress is made or not. The New York Times reports the Big Photo-Op is ready to go. The president and the two prime ministers are to appear together on a bridge over the swimming pool behind the King of Jordan's palace.
"White House operatives had the Jordanians build a bridge over the pool, officials said, so that the leaders could walk over the water, side by side, toward the massed cameras. When the first bridge proved too narrow for more than one man to cross at once, the Americans had the Jordanians tear it down and start over, officials said."
This is the kind of attention to detail that got that aircraft carrier turned around so when Bush landed on it, we couldn't see San Diego in the background. Some details are more important than others in this administration.
She's also got more on the House Rethuglican's attempt to gut overtime:
All over this country, working people are losing out. We've lost 2.7 million jobs, health insurance is going up like a rocket, salaries are shrinking, and wait'll you see what they're fixing to do to your pension. If y'all don't speak up now instead of griping later, the fat-cat lobbyists for big business are going to push this right through. Don't say no one warned you.
Privatization vs. public control emerges as key issue in shaping future of country
In Iraq, a country ringed by desert and often seared by 110-degree heat, no commodity matters more than water. Its delivery to homes, businesses and fields used to be the province of Saddam Hussein's government. Now, as U.S. forces rebuild the country, debate is growing over who should control the tap.
Should Iraq's water system remain in public hands as a state-run utility? Or should private companies -- Iraqi or foreign -- run it?
The same questions hang over Iraq's other basic utilities -- its power grid and sewage system. Although San Francisco's Bechtel Corp. is now working to repair them, all will need serious long-term investment for the country to thrive. Some experts see private management as a way to pump money into those utilities.
And yet the thought of privatizing such basic human needs raises fears that the people of Iraq will lose control over their own resources. Much like the debate over oil, arguments about utility privatization reflect fears that Iraq's reconstruction will turn into a great grab -- with a few people or corporations seizing the country's key assets.
Not to worrry.
Federal officials, aware of the emotions this issue stokes, say a decision on Iraq's utilities must wait until an interim Iraqi government takes charge.
Feeling reassured?
Battered by war and stripped by looters, Iraq's utilities are in desperate need of repair
(snip)
Bechtel's $680 million reconstruction contract covers repairs to the country's electrical grid, water works and sewers. But what happens after those immediate repairs?
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has already said he wants to see some of Iraq's state-run businesses sold off, although he did not specifically mention the utilities. Conservatives see privatization as a way to dismantle the vestiges of Baath Party power in Iraq, because Hussein's government controlled most every aspect of the economy before the war (my italics)
Isn't that special? Privitization=de-Baathification. Public Ownership=Saddam.
Hired to run the water system in Cochabamba, Bolivia, a Bechtel joint venture saw its contract canceled by the government after protests against price increases turned violent. Bechtel says the hikes averaged 35 percent. Some Cochabamba residents complained their bills doubled before the fee increases were revoked.**
(snip)
Bechtel insists it has no preference for whether Iraq's utilities stay public or turn private. Company spokesman Jonathan Marshall said protesters have oversimplified a complex situation in Bolivia, a situation he says has nothing to do with Bechtel's job in Iraq.
"Iraqi children are swimming in and drinking raw sewage, and we're trying to fix that," he said.
And don't ask why the children have only raw sewage to drink and swim in, or why Bechtel is there putting the Iraqi infrastructure back together.
I once saw some captured German WW2 newsreels; one showed the heroic efforts of Nazi ground troops as they sprung into action to save the Cathedral of Rouen from a devastating fire that had been caused by, yeah, you probably guessed it, a German bombing raid. Imagine that: the Germans came all the way from Germany to save that Cathedral, from themselves. No, the point here is not to establish a moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and the US of A., only a moral equivalence between propogandists, of any stripe.
Good article, especially because it gives the last word to the invaluable Benjamin Barber, whose "impending" book can be ordered here:"
"If one were to define a core democratic decision a people could make, the treatment of things like water and power and media would be it....It's a pretty basic part of government."
**For more, much more on Bolivia, Bechtel and water, see Now with Bill Moyers and Frontline World; watch the video, read Wm Finnigan's New Yorker article, enjoy the title, "Leasing The Rain": both sites have great links, and this subject of water ain't going away.
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