While war and disaster are bad for most people, they have been a financial windfall for those with ties to Halliburton.
An analysis released today by the Office of Senator Frank R. Lautenberg reveals that Vice President Cheney's Halliburton stock options have increased in value 3,281 percent in one year... [my em; Link*]
Lafayette debris removal company: Wanted to bid on debris removal, but debris removal contract was put up for bid on a web page only mentioned to Bush cronies.
Straining to find ground troops to maintain its force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon has begun deploying thousands of Air Force personnel to combat zones in new jobs as interrogators, prison sentries and gunners on supply trucks.
[. . .]
Individual branches have spent decades carving out unique roles within the U.S. military, and Air Force officials insist that the redeployment of its personnel is temporary. Nonetheless, the reassignments come as another sign that the Pentagon is struggling to meet the demands of what military officials have begun calling "the long war."
[. . .]
[. . .]
The changes within the Air Force, even if temporary, run counter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's overall vision of the military as a lighter, faster and more lethal force that relies on technology and efficiency to accomplish national security goals more quickly.
[. . .]
------------------------------------------------------
MSNBC Breaking News
------------------------------------------------------
Taliban rebels ambush police convoy, kill 19 officers, Afghan officials say
"I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court. If the president meant Harriet Miers seriously, I have to assume Bush wants to go back to Crawford and let Dick Cheney run the country.
Unfortunately for Bush, he could nominate his Scottish terrier Barney, and some conservatives would rush to defend him, claiming to be in possession of secret information convincing them that the pooch is a true conservative and listing Barney's many virtues — loyalty, courage, never jumps on the furniture ... "
Auto parts supplier Delphi Corp became the largest auto firm in US history to declare bankruptcy when it announced it was seeking Chapter 11 protection for its US divisions.
While Delphi and its former parent company, General Motors, insisted that there would be no supply interruptions, the move is certain to reverberate across the industry.
[. . .]
[. . .]
Delphi may be the largest, but it is not the first US supplier to seek bankruptcy protection as a result of stiff competition from abroad and shrinking demand for American cars.
It employs some 185,000 workers, including 35,000 in the United States. [Link]
[. . .]
[. . .]
Delphi, which lost $4.8 billion last year, said that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) could take over the company's pension obligations, but the federal agency might not guarantee the full amount. For a retiree under age 65, the maximum benefit is $1,710.51 per month or $20,526.12 per year, an amount lower than the typical payout to Delphi workers.
[. . .]
[. . .]
Wasn't that beautiful and fun? I suspect my fish are also happier and better adjusted than any gang of repressed Puritans you can find.
[. . .]
It's also a good marker. When my fish stop having sex every day, I know that they are feeling stressed or ill or exhausted or aren't getting their proper nutrition...
[. . .]
But what is really troubling about this story, aside from the chutzpah of someone like Freeh accusing anyone else of going easy on the Saudis, is the agenda shown by CBS News in going after Clinton on this story, given that they were ready to air this story tonight without a rebuttal and without talking to anyone who was at the meeting in question. You see, CBS News was ready to air this story tonight on Freeh's claims, when it turns out that Freeh himself wasn't even at the meeting wherein he claims that Clinton asked the Saudis for a contribution and went easy on them regarding the Khobar Towers bombing. And worse yet, Mike Wallace was told that there were at least five people who attended the meeting who could dispute Freeh's allegations, and he was also told that Freeh wasn't even at the meeting himself. Yet Wallace, "60 Minutes", and CBS News were ready to put the smear on Clinton tonight anyway. [my em]
[. . .]
[. . .]
And he [NBC's Chris Matthews] signs off crabbing that the Dems aren't offering a better choice. Iraq has been a disaster of Clancy proportions, and is quickly spiraling into the Biblical, and Matthews wants to carp that the Dems aren't stepping up and taking one in the teeth to give the country an alternative.
[. . .]
Now that every quibble has turned out to be the ugly truth, and every Republican tout has turned out to be lies and treason, Quisling Press hacks like Matthews would be well-advised to Shut The Fuck Up about nagging Democrats about what we should and should not do.
[. . .]
Now we know: President Bush's supporters are prepared to be thoroughly hypocritical when it comes to religion. They'll play religion up or down, whichever helps them most in a political fight.
[. . .]
Let's be clear: It is pro-administration conservatives, not those terrible liberals, who are making an issue of Miers's evangelical faith. Liberals are not opposing Miers because she is an evangelical. Conservatives are telling their friends to support Miers because she is an evangelical.
There is, however, some good news. A significant number of conservatives are outraged over the administration's look-at-her-faith campaign. I was first tipped off to the White House's pious strategy earlier this week by a prominent conservative who is very sympathetic to people of faith but angry at what he sees as the misuse of religion in the Miers battle. [my em]
[. . .]
To understand why the right is rebelling against Harriet Miers, don't waste time boning up on her glory days with the Texas Lottery Commission. The real story in this dust-up is not the Supreme Court candidate, but the man who picked her. The Miers nomination, whatever its fate, will be remembered as the flashpoint when the faith-based Bush base finally started to lose faith in our propaganda president and join the apostate American majority.
Like most Bush fictions, the latest are driven less by ideology than by a desire to hide incompetence. But there's a self-destructive impulse at work as well. "The best way to get the news is from objective sources," the president told Brit Hume of Fox News two years ago. "And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Thus does the White House compound the sin of substituting propaganda for effective action by falling for the same spin it showers on the public.
Beware of leaders who drink their own Kool-Aid. The most distressing aspect of Mr. Bush's press conference last week was less his lies and half-truths than the abundant evidence that he is as out of touch as Custer was on the way to Little Bighorn. The president seemed genuinely shocked that anyone could doubt his claim that his friend is the best-qualified candidate for the highest court. Mr. Bush also seemed unaware that it was Republicans who were leading the attack on Ms. Miers. "The decision as to whether or not there will be a fight is up to the Democrats," he said, confusing his antagonists this time much as he has Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
The administration's strategy for covering up embarrassing realities with fiction reached its purest expression two weeks ago when both Laura Bush and Karen Hughes were recruited to star in propagandistic television "reality" shows. In the first lady's case, this was literally so: she was dispatched to Biloxi to appear in an episode of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition." The thinking seems to be that if Mrs. Bush helps one family on a hit reality series, perhaps no one will notice the reality that no-bid contracts and ineptitude have kept hundreds of thousands of other hurricane victims homeless indefinitely while taxpayers foot the bill for unused trailers and cruise ships.
Ms. Hughes took her act on the road in the Middle East. There she conducted a culturally tone-deaf "listening tour" in which she read her lines from briefing papers and tried to win hearts and minds by posing with little Arab kids as if they were interchangeable with the little black kids in Mr. Bush's "compassionate conservative" photo ops back home. She didn't seem to know that this stunt wouldn't even fly on Fox News anymore, let alone Al Jazeera.
This Saturday is supposed to bring new victories on both these troubled fronts: Oct. 15 is the day that Iraqis vote on their constitution and the day that the president set as a deadline for all hurricane victims to be moved out of shelters. Chances are that the number of Americans who still have faith that the light is at the end of either of these tunnels is identical to the number who believe Harriet Miers is the second coming of Antonin Scalia and that Tom Cruise has found true love.
