Lucky Libby

William Rivers Pitt

The lies promulgated by Mr. Libby led directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the maiming of thousands more, and the creation of a sectarian civil war in that nation whose effects will be generational in impact.

Any federal conviction for lying and obstruction is nothing to sneeze at, but what we have here is the process story instead of the real deal. The actual crimes committed by Libby and his fellow administration members are broad, deep and fundamentally damaging to this nation, and the truth of these true crimes was not even scratched by this verdict.

Mr. Libby's lies helped get a lot of people killed, helped undermine our ability to defend ourselves against the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and helped midwife a war that cuts us all to the quick with every passing day. If that isn't treason, then treason simply does not exist as an actionable criminal act.

And he may not ever wind up doing any time at all. That is the living definition of "lucky." Anyone who thinks true justice prevailed with these convictions needs to take a deep knee-bend and reconsider the facts. Mr. Libby has been convicted for the smallest crimes he committed, while his fellow conspirators walk today in broad daylight, free as birds.

Libby got off easy. The best that can be said about this whole deal is that maybe, just maybe, a little light might have shined on the real criminals for a minute.

Let her talk, but ignore her.

Following up on Gordon's "God Bless Ann Coulter" post. I agree with the Live Journal post that he cites in that I'm absoultely convinced that the answer to dealing with Coulter and Malkin and the other shock jocks of the rabid right is to simply let them talk and ignore them. Don't talk about how horrible they are, don't make fun of them, don't mention their names. Simply let them rant. They are all so enamored of the sound of their own voices and of the attention that they recieive, no matter how negative, that they will keep turning up the volume and the level of absurdity in their pronouncements until they self destruct. So let the be the last past pointing to their follies and let's start ignoring them. Starting now.*

R.

*I know it will take a lot of will power, they are such easy targets, but let's at least try.

Why not pardon Libby?

Guess who?

...

So, really, and, c'mon, why the fuck not just pardon Scooter Libby after yesterday's verdict saying that the once single most important person to the Vice President is a perjuring liar? Sure, sure, Harry Reid can say that the President must not pardon Libby, as can many other Democrats, citing things like an "accountability" moment and that it would be a "serious mistake," but, Christ almighty, in the realm of the mistakes you've already made, Bush administration, what have you got to lose? It's not like anyone would be surprised by it. [my em]

...

I mean, you wouldn't be surprised by Dick Cheney fucking boneless Iraqi children, would ya?

Internet radio

Help Ted. Thanks to Creature for pointing this out.

Gotta love Vermont

Via Lambert, my neighbors to the north have had enough:

BOSTON (Reuters) - More than 30 Vermont towns passed resolutions on Tuesday seeking to impeach President Bush, while at least 16 towns in the tiny New England state called on Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

...

Good, decent folks up there with strong convictions. Let's hope the Congress listens to them.

God Bless Ann Coulter

(See reference to "he's drinking his bath water again" in previous post.)

But seriously folks, this guy makes a good point.

Here's the thing. If you're the Dems, the last thing in hell you want is for Ann Coulter to stop talking. When you're arguing with a complete moron, the best strategy is to hand him/her a microphone and stand aside. (Actually, this is the basic Miltonian principle behind America's notions of the value of free speech, so I can't take credit for inventing the idea.) If you're a Republican, it's a bit trickier. Ann was fun when you were passing her around at fundraiser afterparties like a bottle of cheap tequila. She deflowered a whole generation of College Republicans in a series of campus whistlestops, and she actually served a purpose when she was out on the circuit "energizing the base." But damn, now the crazy skank done gone and got noticed by the mainstream, and in a flash she went from everybody's party favor to the party's biggest liability.

Right now, America is looking at her like she's the loose cannon love spawn of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Katherine Harris, and every time she opens her mouth in public she costs you votes that recent polling results indicate you can't afford to lose.

Heh. Me'n Fixer have been called, nay, complimented, by TCF for being "loose cannon love spawn" too, but in the good way as the product of Frank Rich and Randi Rhodes.

That's why the GOP disinfo machine is in full rage right now. I mean, let's be honest. Not only is this not the worst thing Coulter has said in the last few years, I'm not sure it even makes her Greatest Hits double CD set. She's so damned nuts that you could stick her in a room full of Iranian holocaust deniers and they'd all start nervously edging toward the door.

Don't miss this one!

Spin the Turd

[A big welcome to Sideshow readers! ~ F.]

You ain't gonna believe this one! From The Pueblo Chieftain. Heck of a name for a newspaper, huh?

Colorado Springs, in response to Fountain Creek pollution lawsuits, admits it "may have" discharged untreated sewage, fecal coli bacteria and other dangerous substances from its sewage system.

The city admits that untreated sewage may cause illnesses, but "denies that a person would always or necessarily suffer imminent and substantial endangerment to their health upon contact with untreated sewage."

The lawsuits allege the city has violated the federal Clean Water Act because its sewage system has for several years repeatedly spilled raw sewage, excessive chlorine and nonpotable water into the creek.

Colorado Springs' filing says it "admits that the releases . . . may have contained untreated sewage, wastewater, nonpotable water, sludge, municipal waste, biological materials, storm water, fecal coli form bacteria and e.coli bacteria."

But it denies it is violating the act "and denies liability . . . as to any alleged past violation" of the act.

They're about one step away from claiming raw sewage is good for you!

I've used the phrase "he's drinking his bath water again" to explain stupid or irrational behavior. In Colorado Springs it appears they actually are.

Note to Ted Haggard and the U.S. Air Fundies Force Academy: Here's your excuse - eat shit and be a phony christian!

Jane and Marcy's final Libby trial v-log

TalkLeft

Politics TV brings you the final v-log from Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and Marcy Wheeler (Empty Wheel) of The Next Hurrah.

I'm going to miss them both. They provided invaluable coverage of this trial. At the end, they talk about the impact of bloggers on the trial and credit all of us who blogged from the courthouse.

Also at the end they talk about the firing of the prosecutors and the future of the American judicial system.

Thank you, Jane and Marcy. You did a wonderful job and we're very proud of you. Take the rest of the day off.

"I am not a faggot. I am a man."

Andrew Sullivan on the Coultergeist's 'faggot' comments. My 'recommended read of the day'.

[...] It was an ugly atmosphere, designed to make any gay man or woman in the room feel marginalized and despised. To put it simply, either conservatism is happy to be associated with that atmosphere, or it isn't. I think the response so far suggests that the conservative elites don't want to go there, but the base has already been there for a very long time. (That's why this affair is so revealing, because it is showing which elites want to pander to bigots, and which do not.)

Sullivan is starting to see the light.

A suggestion for probing our shameful treatment of fallen troops

Joseph L. Galloway

One reader e-mailed me this week to suggest that if we really want to get to the bottom of this scandal, we should appoint an investigative commission made up of 10 mothers of wounded soldiers instead of the usual suspects who sit on blue-ribbon commissions and find no one responsible for problems.

Simple and brilliant. It'll never happen, because it would actually work.

Privatization

Digby looks at it with regard to the VA, but it could be applied to any government agency:

...

As Matt Yglesias explains today, privatizing is not some sort of magical ritual that automatically results in goodness and light. Indeed, when it comes to government services it is just a plain old patronage machine that delivers to the favored politicians at the expense of the people:

...

Indeed, especially during this administration who's privatized half the military. We have mercenaries doing what troops should because we don't have enough troops. We're paying assholes 10 times what the troops were making doing the same jobs. We're making the big guys at Blackwater and DynCorp and others rich beyond their wildest dreams, all friends and contributors to Bush Inc. And who suffers?

The sick and injured GIs, the poor people of NOLA, and all the folks who fall through the cracks because keeping track of them and their needs would cut too far into the profit margin.

Questions, questions

How is it that I paid $2.31/gal for regular gas last Tuesday and $2.76 today? Is somebody else at Exxon/Mobil retiring in the next couple months? Vultures.

Good luck ...

With that Presidential run, Mitt.

Pic thanks to Watertiger.

Dear Darling Husband

From our commenter Red State Blues at this post comes this jewel. Just go see. Ha!

Nautilus 90 North

LATimes

William Anderson, who made history in 1958 when he commanded the atomic submarine Nautilus under the polar ice cap to the North Pole and later served four terms as a U.S. congressman from Tennessee, has died. He was 85.

The Nautilus submerged under the Arctic ice pack off Point Barrow, Alaska, on Aug. 1. It crossed the North Pole at 11:15 p.m., Aug. 3, and ended its 1,830-mile journey under the polar ice pack when it emerged in the Greenland Sea on Aug. 5.

"Nautilus 90 North," Anderson's 1959 account of the submarine's historic voyage, which he wrote with Clay Blair Jr., became a bestseller.

I got that book as a present for my 14th birthday. I still have it.

As an aside, Nautilus developed a reactor coolant leak near Seattle. The crew scoured auto parts stores and rounded up every can of Bar's Leaks in the city, poured it in, and went under the ice. That took balls. Or normal sailor brains. They made history.

So long, Cap'n.

Penguin hates the troops!

Go see This Modern World. Don't take it personal, BadTux.

American Legion Commander: 'I Blame Bush And Congress' For Veterans Cuts

Like, DUH!

Think Progress

President Bush spoke to the American Legion today, claiming that "support of our veterans has been a high priority in my administration," and that one of his priorities is "making sure that our veterans have got good, decent, quality healthcare."

Lyin' sack o' shit. I'm not alone:

President Bush should save his rhetoric. In an interview with National Public Radio, even American Legion National Commander Paul Morin, a regular political ally of the White House, pointed out that Bush has consistently skimped on veterans funding. "We are not pleased with the budget for the military and for the VA hospitals for our veterans," Morin said. "I blame the President and Congress for insufficient funding of the VA health care system."

A look at the facts back up Morin's claims about Bush's short-changing of veterans:

Bush plans to cut veterans health care after 2008. "The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans' health care two years from now - even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system. ...Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly - by more than 10 percent in many years - White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter."

Bush raises health care costs for veterans. For the fifth year in a row, Bush's budget has attempted to raise health care costs on 1.3 million veterans, calling for "new enrollment fees and higher drug co-payments for some veterans."

Bush administration has claimed veterans benefits are "hurtful" to national security. In 2005, the Wall Street Journal noted the growing cost of veterans benefits due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon's response was to complain that it would "rather use [the funds] to help troops fighting today." "The amounts have gotten to the point where they are hurtful. They are taking away from the nation's ability to defend itself," says David Chu, the Pentagon's undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

Truly despicable.

I'm glad the Big Wheel of the AL has said this, but I'm not renewing my membership until they renounce Bush's criminal war.

Guilty

CNN

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts in his perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

It's a good start on cleaning out the White House. One down, at least three to go.

Libby, 56, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million.

CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said, "He is virtually certain to go to prison if this conviction is upheld."

I'll believe it when I see it. Look for a Bush pardon about one minute prior to a real President's inauguration in 1/08.

Update:

Think Progress

UPDATE IV: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) calls on President Bush to pledge not to pardon Libby:

I welcome the jury's verdict. It's about time someone in the Bush Administration has been held accountable for the campaign to manipulate intelligence and discredit war critics. Lewis Libby has been convicted of perjury, but his trial revealed deeper truths about Vice President Cheney's role in this sordid affair. Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct.

I got a dollar says Bush won't pledge anything of the kind, and even if he does, he'll go back on it.

Good question

Mrs. F and I were talking about this yesterday. Seems our pal Patricia was reading our minds:

... While there has been lots of discussion about these two Democratic presidential candidates [Clinton, Obama] being in attendance there [Selma, AL], where were the Republican presidential candidates? ...

Yeah, what she said.

Heh ...

Pic courtesy of the King.

Maybe, just maybe, Coulter went too far this time

From CNN:

"Three major companies have requested their ads be pulled from AnnCoulter.com"

From WaPo:

Several Republican presidential candidates quickly distanced themselves. As the New York Times reported, Rudy Giuliani called the remarks "completely inappropriate," a spokesman for John McCain said they were "wildly inappropriate," and an aide to Mitt Romney called the comments "offensive."

Conservative bloggers joined the fray. "Yeah, that's just what CPAC needs -- an association with homophobia. Nice work, Ann," wrote Ed Morrissey of the Captain's Quarters blog. And Michelle Malkin said Coulter had committed "the equivalent of a rhetorical fragging -- an intentionally tossed verbal grenade that exploded in her own fellow ideological soldiers' tent," and that children should not be "exposed to that garbage."

From KXMA, Dickinson, N.D.:

"Conservatism treats humans as they are, as moral creatures possessing rational minds and capable of discerning right from wrong. There comes a time when we must speak out in the defense of the conservative movement, and make a stand for political civility. This is one of those times."

From Ann herself, via DallasNews.com

Coulter, asked for a reaction to the Republican criticism, said in an e-mail message: "C'mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean."

The woman is beyond disgusting. Maybe the progressive community should simply boycott her. Not react at all. Seems to me that would nullify a good bit of what she is after.

Still waiting for Bill Donohue's statement of outrage. . .

R.

"He's a lyin' skunk..."

Go read this exchange between Don Imus, who, whatever you think about him, is a Marine, and Holy Joe at Crooks and Liars:

LIEBERMAN: "Your questions about General Kiley are very good questions, and I'm going to ask him. Because this, after all, is the guy that was in charge for a couple years."

IMUS: "Well, he's a lying skunk. He ought to be forced to resign today, Senator."

LIEBERMAN: "Of course, I don't have that exact authority."(LAUGHTER)

"But I will tell you that - I'm on the Armed Services Committee. The Armed Services Committee oversees the medical hospitals. And a group of us on the committee are going out there this afternoon. And I am going to ask some of the tough questions that you and a lot of others…"

IMUS: "See if they'll let you, Senator Joe Lieberman, walk around without being escorted by four or five of these generals who've known about this for years."

Yeah, those careerist bastards will make sure you get the spin the Army wants you to have:

"But, Senator, they're just little rats...and penicillin comes from mold...and these guys are such good soldiers they'd much rather be here than at home..."

There's so much shit hittin' the fan over this that I'm covered in plastic like at a Gallagher show. Good. It goes a Hell of a lot deeper than Bldg. 18.

Coultergeist's Loose Lips May Sink CPAC Ship

Please pardon any horrid visuals brought on by my mention of Coulter's 'lips'.

Expanding on Fixer's post, I can't resist posting TRex's comment:

It's time for our side to claim some fucking scalps, and I can't think of a single nasty-ass bleach job I'd rather have hanging on my wall than hers.

Ya think she bleaches that too?

From Raw Story:

But two days afterwards, Democrats were bashing Coulter for hate speech and Republicans, including leading candidates who attending the same conference, rejected her language.

"It would be better, in my opinion, to not have a CPAC at all than to have one that presents conservatism as a hostile, people-hating ideology," said Amy Ridenour, whose National Center for Public Policy Research was one of the paying sponsors for CPAC.

"We conservatives have enough trouble overcoming the false things that are said about us without paying for a platform upon which we shoot ourselves annually in the foot," she wrote on her weblog Sunday.

Shit, you conservatives have enough trouble overcoming the true things that are said about you!

No Easter This Year

They found the body. Heh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Military Targets Younger Recruits
Easier to train, generally less trouble.

Fall Fashions Unveiled
Women get peek at what they'll be wearing in October.

Wow! Nice domes!

Iraq: Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds Agree to Split Oil Evenly
Between Chevron, Exxon and BP

Pentagon Announces Plans to Make New H-Bombs
They're needed, says spokesman, to replace ones that are missing.

Valor and Squalor

Paul Krugman on the mess at Walter Reed.

Yet even now it's not clear whether the public will be told the full story, which is that the horrors of Walter Reed's outpatient unit are no aberration*. For all its cries of "support the troops," the Bush administration has treated veterans' medical care the same way it treats everything else: nickel-and-diming the needy, protecting the incompetent and privatizing everything it can.

But as with FEMA, the Bush administration has done all it can to undermine that achievement. And the Walter Reed scandal is another Hurricane Katrina: the moment when the administration's misgovernment became obvious to everyone.

We know from Hurricane Katrina postmortems that one of the factors degrading FEMA's effectiveness was the Bush administration's relentless push to outsource and privatize disaster management, which demoralized government employees and drove away many of the agency's most experienced professionals. It appears that the same thing has been happening to veterans' care.

The redoubtable Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, points out that IAP Worldwide Services, a company run by two former Halliburton executives, received a large contract to run Walter Reed under suspicious circumstances: the Army reversed the results of an audit concluding that government employees could do the job more cheaply.

What comes next? Francis J. Harvey, who as far as I can tell was the first defense contractor appointed secretary of the Army, has been forced out. But the parallels between what happened at Walter Reed and what happened to New Orleans - not to mention parallels with the mother of all scandals, the failed reconstruction of Iraq - tell us that the roots of the scandal run far deeper than the actions of a few bad men.

I think the "roots of the scandal" will be traced to a morally bankrupt Repuglican ruling class. This Vets' care mess has been known about for years, but has only come to light to the point of something being done about it under Democrats. Get 'em, Hank.

*"No aberration"

No kidding. Go see WaPo:

'It Is Just Not Walter Reed'

Oliva is but one quaking voice in a vast outpouring of accounts filled with emotion and anger about the mistreatment of wounded outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Stories of neglect and substandard care have flooded in from soldiers, their family members, veterans, doctors and nurses working inside the system. They describe depressing living conditions for outpatients at other military bases around the country, from Fort Lewis in Washington state to Fort Dix in New Jersey. They tell stories -- their own versions, not verified -- of callous responses to combat stress and a system ill equipped to handle another generation of psychologically scarred vets.

Hundreds of soldiers contacted The Washington Post through telephone calls and e-mails, many of them describing their bleak existence in Medhold.

From Fort Campbell in Kentucky: "There were yellow signs on the door stating our barracks had asbestos."

From Fort Bragg in North Carolina: "They are on my [expletive] like a diaper. . . . there are people getting chewed up everyday."

From Fort Dix in New Jersey: "Scare tactics are used against soldiers who will write sworn statement to assist fellow soldiers for their medical needs."

From Fort Irwin in California: "Most of us have had to sign waivers where we understand that the housing we were in failed to meet minimal government standards."

If you think you've got "outrage overload" now, wait 'til you read the whole piece. Your eyes will flash red and steam will come out your ears. Make sure your safety valves aren't tied down or your head's likely to explode.

I'm glad this is all coming out now, but four years is too goddam long.

Dear Ann Coulter,

Thank you, thank you, thank you. From the great TRex:

...

But I really feel like we owe her a big thank-you. With one ill-considered fag joke, she has completely obviated the need for any further debate about the "Lack of Civility on the Left". The next time someone on either side gets all up in your grille for being a bomb-throwing liberal with no manners, just point at that bleach-blonde pile of sticks in the crusty black cocktail dress and say, "When she turns civil, I will. Until then, the goddamn gloves are off. You got a problem with the level of discourse, take it up with her. Now go away, kid, you're fuckin' bothering me."

...

Just pointing out the hypocrisy. I've done my share of explaining my language, and that of the staff, here. When I'm pissed, I swear. There's a difference between being angry at the system and using derogatory language to put down one group or the other. A difference the racist, hate-filled conservatives don't, or refuse to, get.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Who d'ya think?



More at Wikipedia and Sony Pictures Classics.

Powerful

From Ken Catalino. More here

R.

Toyota May Face Backlash From Congress

From AP via WTOP (DC) via Raw Story

From a high school auditorium near the birthplace of Elvis, Toyota was greeted like a hometown hero this week when it announced its eighth vehicle assembly plant in North America.

Students cheered as the automaker showed off a Highlander sport utility vehicle that will be built starting in 2010 at the $1.3 billion plant near Tupelo, Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour called Toyota Motor Corp. the "world's premiere auto manufacturer," and Sen. Trent Lott, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, promised "when you are in our constituency, we are warriors on your behalf."

Toyota could surpass General Motors Corp. as the world's No. 1 automaker next year, but the company has downplayed the significance, saying it's more concerned with its customers, maintaining quality and rolling out a lineup that includes the new Tundra full-sized pickup - built in San Antonio, Texas.

In U.S. sales released Thursday, the company had its best February ever, posting sales increases of more than 12 percent. Sales of its Prius hybrid grew 86.8 percent while Camry and Corolla sales showed hefty increases.

No, I didn't post this here at the Brain by mistake instead of at Fixer & Gordon. This story is as political as it gets.

Privately, Toyota officials acknowledge the potential pitfalls of growing rapidly in the U.S. during a period of job cuts and plant closings for GM, Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group.

But some members of Congress and advocacy groups question if Toyota is unfairly benefiting at the expense of U.S. automakers, who face large health care and retiree costs that they say are exacerbated by Japan's currency practices. The weak yen puts domestics at a price disadvantage of several thousand dollars per vehicle, they argue.

Members of Congress who support domestic automakers concede they face major hurdles. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., noted that "you can't swing a dead cat in the parking lot (on Capitol Hill) without hitting a Toyota or Honda or a Mitsubishi. I don't believe it's a political problem."

The Camry, after all, remains the nation's top-selling passenger car. Rogers, who grew up in the rural outskirts of Detroit, said he remembered the days when "you did not consider buying a foreign car. Now I think the attitude of America has changed."

I think that 'attitude' started 'changing' in about 1970, but it takes Congress and the auto companies a little while to realize the bad smell is from the mackerel they're being slapped in the face with. Besides, I live in Californiastan. We're just a buncha Jap-shit-drivin' commies anyway.

There wouldn't be a problem at all if 'Detroit' could produce vehicles of the same quality as Toyota et al at a comparable price. They fell behind in this and it's bitin' 'em in the ass. They actually have some pretty good models, many inspired by foreign partners, but they've relied too heavily on gas-guzzling SUVs and pickups: make what sells, don't plan ahead.

There is precedent: The exact same thing happened to the British and American motorcycle industries in the late 1960s when the head-in-the-sand attitude maintained that the Japanese couldn't produce good motorcycles. It was true at first - they made up for really pretty bad designs with very attractive prices, but look at them now: excellent machines, many assembled in the U.S., at reasonable prices.

Granted, the U.S. auto companies offered good benefits to their now aging workforce, and that has driven their health care costs up to the range of $1500 per vehicle. The 'Bigs' are now basically health care providers who manufacture autos to pay for it. Foresight past the quarterly earnings reports could maybe have helped.

Go read.

Update:

See also this LATimes article:

Japanese automakers once again claim all the No. 1 spots in Consumer Reports' annual survey.

When it rains, it pours...

. . . and sometimes invasions provide a chuckle

"Switzerland's army marched into neighboring Liechtenstein this week. But easy-going Liechtenstein seemed to take it in stride.

"It has happened before," Liechtenstein government spokeswoman Gerlinde Manz-Christ told ABC News. "Nobody really realized it."

more at ABC News

R.

Supply and demand

...

Some critics have condemned the magnets as a cheap and superficial way to honour the armed forces and highlighted the irony of placing them on gas-guzzling vehicles that deepen the US's dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

...

You can buy a yellow 'support the troops' magnet for a penny and they have over a million in surplus. Good, people are waking up.

It's all about the whore ...

It's Saturday night and another chapter of my novel The Captains is up at The Practical Press.

Now that I've got the whoring out of the way, I wanted to say Mrs. F and I had a wonderful time with our pal Lurch from Main and Central this afternoon at one of our hangouts. I'm just sorry 3 hours went so quickly. We spoke of everything from blogging to love to dogs, and Gordon of course ... heh. Thanks for making the time to visit us, pal.

The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007

From the Committee On Oversight and Government Reform, Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-CA), 110th Congress:

On March 1, 2007, Rep. Henry A. Waxman along with Reps. Platts, Clay, and Burton introduced H.R. 1255, the Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007, to nullify a 2001 presidential executive order and restore public access to presidential records.

Overturning the Bush Executive Order. Under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records are supposed to be released to historians and the public 12 years after the end of a presidential administration. In November 2001, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order 13233 which overturned an executive order issued by President Reagan and gave current and former presidents and vice presidents broad authority to withhold presidential records or delay their release indefinitely. The Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2007 would nullify the Bush executive order and establish procedures to ensure the timely release of presidential records.

There's more. Go read.

This is the equivalent of turning over rocks that were carefully piled by Bush to hide things. Support it.

Full Wolf Moon

According to my Old Farmer's Almanac:

March 3: total eclipse of the Moon. This eclipse will be visible only in eastern North America, so the times here are in Eastern Standard Time only. The Moon will enter the penumbra at 3:16 p.m. EST and will leave the penumbra at 9:25 p.m. EST.

You Easterners get the show, so quit gazing at yer navels and go outside at and after sunset and look up.

Us Westerners just get stuck with another beautiful moonlight night. Sigh.

Quote of the Day

"Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight chicken shit can turn to chicken salad." --Lyndon B. Johnson

I would only add that sometimes it works the other way around.

R.

What Is Missing at CPAC?

Mike Stark at HuffPo

Everyone is here... Michelle Malkin. Ann Coulter. Newt Gingrich. Duncan Hunter. Mitt Romney. Jeff Gannon. Sam Brownback. Melanie Morgan. John O'Neill... Oh so many heroes of the right...

And let me tell you - they've really turned out impressive support. At a time when the conservative agenda polls in the thirties, one gets the impression that they are all here.

Something else these folks have done well is turn out the new generation of wingnuts. The average age of the attendee here has got to be below 30 - there are literally thousands of College Republicans moving about in Brownian style from exhibit to exhibit, conference to conference, speaker to speaker, ballroom to ballroom.

Exhibit hall is stuffed to the gills. Freedom Alliance. Blogger's row. Heritage Foundation. American Spectator. Clare Booth Luce Foundation... the Koch group... Regent University. Several candidates have booths. Oddly enough, even the ACLU has a booth (even if they are placed in the back corner furthest from Exhibit Hall's entrance).

Oh... but there's one notable - striking, even - absence.

There are no military recruiters here. No United States Marine Corps. No Army, no Navy, no Air Force or National Guard - hell, not even the Coast Guard is here. Thousands and thousands of College Republicans, but not a single recruiter in sight...

Why?

Well, I have a theory or two (Michelle Malkin doesn't agree with me, but more on that later).

Let's try this: CPAC didn't want to be embarrassed when pictures were released that showed recruiters standing around looking lonely. Similarly, recruiters know it's a better investment of their time to troll "the other malls" rather than to recruit these nice white college boys.

I think the recruiters have been told to pretty much stay away from the spawn of the ruling elite, or else they just don't bother to waste their time. The "nice white college boys" have "other priorities", such as learning how to rule and steal from the masses, not going off to this fraudulent war, however noble they tell others it is. There's plenty of peasants to bullshit into doing that. They probably wouldn't be worth a shit as soldiers anyway.

What the young Repuglicans don't realize is that they're missing a bet by not flocking to join up and go serve in their great cause in Iraq - what better bona fides for political success in later life could there possibly be than having two or three prosthetic limbs from an IED? Besides showing them as heroes who served, it would give them something in common with their subjects fellow citizens.

Oh, but why would they want or need that? They're getting the country handed to them on a platter by their parents anyway. Besides, they wouldn't want to miss any keggers.

"S" Storm

The Hill, 1 March '07

A House Judiciary subcommittee approved today the first in what is expected to be an avalanche of subpoenas to Bush administration officials. They will likely explore corruption and mismanagement allegations on everything from pre-war Iraq intelligence to the mishandling of the response to Hurricane Katrina.

The first round of subpoenas concern the recent controversial firings by the Bush administration of seven U.S. attorneys, some of whom were pursuing public corruption cases against Republican members of Congress.

Tuesday's hearing will consider a bill by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) that would reverse a new Patriot Act provision allowing the attorney general to appoint federal prosecutors without Senate confirmation through the duration of the Bush administration.

Democrats have come to the defense of several dismissed prosecutors, in particular Lam and Cummins of Arkansas. They have noted that Lam was leading the probe of ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), while Cummins was removed to make room for a former aide to White House senior adviser Karl Rove. Other U.S. attorneys, including those in Nevada and Arizona, were acting on corruption charges against GOP lawmakers before their resignations were requested.

Democrats, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), have expressed outrage over the firings. She and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have demanded to see the attorneys' performance evaluations.

"So this Administration either originally hired incompetent attorneys in the first place, or hired competent U.S. Attorneys, but incompetently fired them. Which is it?" he asked. "Many Americans believe these U.S. Attorneys are not being fired because they failed to go after public corruption, but because they did and were successful."

This administration doesn't like success, particularly when it comes to investigations of itself.

Crank up them presses! Let the subpœnas fly!

Getting out ...

From SP at C & L:

...

Little by little, we're hearing stories that have managed to go unnoticed such as the 500th American amputee, and all the problems at Walter Reed Hospital. Spiegel Online brings light to yet another inconvenient truth. Our soldiers are finding ways to get out of this unjust war and some are choosing to go AWOL at the rate of more than 5 per day. [my em]

...

Almost 2000 soldiers have gotten out of the military this way last year alone.

The Dick's Non-Death Hits The Fan

There's a lot of brouhaha today over reactions to the Bagram bombing that missed The Dick, and to the wingnut reactions to those reactions. I'm lazy, so go see for yourself. Heh. From Cursor:

'Is "Howard Kurtz" a software program?' wonders Glenn Greenwald, after correctly predicting a column profiling how right wing bloggers exposed the "scandal" of anonymous commenters on a liberal blog lamenting that Cheney hadn't been killed by a bomb in Afghanistan.

Shorter: when anonymous liberal bloggers on anonymous little blogs lament the non-death of The Dick, the wingnuts think they should be killed for exercising free speech. However, when wingnuts, like Malkin, O'rally, et al, call for the deaths of their political opponents, that's patriotic. IOKIYAR.

Cheney Bars Press From Calling Him "Vice President"

Frameshop

On the Vice President's page of the White House web site they keep an archive of all speeches/interviews by the Vice President from February 15, 2001 up to the present day. Until yesterday, every one of those entries referred to the Vice President as the "Vice President." But not yesterday.

Suddenly, during his trip abroad, the Vice President decided that the press corp was forbidden from calling him "Vice President," and required that he be called by the mysterious name "Senior Administration Official."

This is so bizarre it almost defies description.

The opening section of the transcript is as follows:

That oughta set the hook! Go read. More:

Apparently, Cheney was not happy with the coverage he was getting from the press, so this was his way of dolling out punishment. Froomkin calls this approach Cheney's effort to "extort from reporters a ridiculous agreement," citing it as a sign of the contempt Cheney has for the press. Fromkin's article describes how gleefully the press tore Cheney's anonymity to pieces.

Once again, Dick Cheney believes that the problems American soldiers face in the Middle East and Central Asia can be solved by PR campaigns launched against American journalists and against the Democratic Party.

Iraq not going well? Attack the Democratic leadership.

Taliban on the rise in Afghanistan? Forbid journalists from calling you "Vice President."

Whole sections of the planet gone to hell in a hand basket because of Dick Cheney's policies and pig-headed stubbornness? Criticize the American public.

Yeah. That will fix things.

What might help "fix things" would be to refer to The Dick as "Inmate Cheney".

I think I've got 'inmates' on my brain today.

Reminder

I should have posted this yesterday, but I thought it started tonight:

Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris on Soundstage on PBS. You can check your local listings at the link.

Colorado to Use Inmates to Fill Migrant Shortage

LATimes

Denver - Ever since passing what its Legislature promoted as the nation's toughest laws against illegal immigration last summer, Colorado has struggled with a labor shortage as migrants fled the state. This week, officials announced a novel solution: Use convicts as farmworkers.

Here's the 'money' line, so to speak:

The inmates will be watched by prison guards, who will be paid by the farms. The cost is subject to negotiation, but farmers say they expect to pay more for the inmate labor and its associated costs than for their traditional workers.

I'm sure that's just fine with the Department of Corrections. I think prison guards cost more than agricultural workers.

"If they can't get slaves from Mexico, they want them from the jails," said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, which favors restrictions on immigration.

Ricardo Martinez of the Denver immigrant rights group Padres Unidos asked: "Are we going to pull in inmates to work in the service industry too? You won't have enough inmates - unless you start importing them from Texas."

Import them from Texas? Oh, the horror!

If this deal catches on, look for an upsurge of arrests of qualified legal immigrant agricultural workers, and more prisons built in farming areas. Win-win!

There's another solution to the lack of agricultural workers: the way Bush is mishandling the economy, we could have another Great Depression and fill the fields with migratory 'fruit tramps' ridin' the rods (do trains still have rods?) and following the crops like in the 1930s. See Grapes of Wrath.

There's yet another solution, but it'll never fly: hire American kids to do it. Yeah, right. Little fuckers are too spoiled to ever do anything remotely resembling actual hard work where they might get tired and dirty, or that is 'beneath their dignity'. It would damn sure do 'em some good though, might build some dignity and character instead of the unwarranted 'self-esteem' they're told they should have just for being alive.

I think this points up the need for immigration reform in the form of a guest worker program. I think it's funny that this is the only thing Bush has gotten right, and his party wouldn't hear of it.

From my own experience, I have nothing against inmate labor. I've done it, liked it, clamored for the opportunity. Our Nevada County jail, the Wayne Brown Correctional Facility aka "Wayne's World", sends inmates out every day of the week to work in the community. As far as I know, there's no charge for this. It benefits the community because they get workers they couldn't otherwise afford, and it's good for the inmates because they get to get out of the jail during the day.

There is no supervision by Correctional Officers. There's no need for it. Only non-violent offenders are in the trusty section that provides the workers and they'd be idiots to screw up a relatively easy way to do their time. Besides, the trusty section has girls, ping-pong, and vending machines. Hint: the jail doesn't make change. Folks around here know to take a coupla rolls of quarters with them when they go to jail. Heh.

The best deal was to go work at the local food bank. Easy warehouse work, loading trucks mostly, and they cook a big lunch and provide tobacco and papers and plenty of smoke breaks. There's no smoking in jail, so this is huge to us smokers. The food is a lot better, too. Sometimes you get to ride on a truck to somewhere and participate in food distribution programs, which is mostly unloading trucks and setting up tables, but extends to carrying groceries to the car for little old ladies. You get to interact with the locals, too. I've seen inmates call their friends to come out and bring them, er, things of the kind they were probably in jail for in the first place. Nothing that the COs could smell on their breath.

I also worked at the county recycling center and the Elks club. All the outfits provide cigarettes and food for the inmates.

My most memorable outing was when I was on a working party that policed up a murder scene at the county services building. One of their clients got off his meds and went and shot the joint up and killed three people. Another broke her leg jumping out the window to get away. The cops had cut out all the sections of wall with bullet holes for evidence, but there were still some blood stains. We just dismantled the joint so they could rebuild it to be more secure, and also to physically change it so the employees wouldn't be reminded of the horror every day. It was a county office, so it had to be open for business pretty quick, and the builders were rebuilding it while we were still doing the teardown. The cops caught the guy right away, and since the inmates were all locals and many of them knew the victims, put him in the medical ward for his own protection. He's off the streets for good now.

That deal took three of us three days. The first night we worked pretty late and missed dinner, so the county guy bought us dinner at Denny's, 'to go' of course. It wasn't like we could go in and sit down in filthy jail clothes. That would not have done much for 'community relations'. Believe me, folks, after eatin' jail food, Denny's is good eats!

Since I quit drinkin' I'm not keeping up with the latest at Wayne's World. That's good, but the experience was enlightening. I've been in county jails three times, in two different counties, for a grand total of about forty days. I'm over it now. It won't kill you, in rural counties anyway, but it's nothing to look forward to and I don't recommend it as a destination resort.

Supporting the troops

Why do our GIs hate America and embolden the terrists:

WASHINGTON — Seventy-two percent of troops on the ground in Iraq think U.S. military forces should get out of the country within a year, according to a Zogby poll released Tuesday.

The survey of 944 troops, conducted in Iraq between Jan. 18 and Feb. 14, said that only 23 percent of servicemembers thought U.S. forces should stay “as long as they are needed.”

Of the 72 percent, 22 percent said troops should leave within the next six months, and 29 percent said they should withdraw “immediately.” Twenty-one percent said the U.S. military presence should end within a year; 5 percent weren’t sure.

But policy experts differ on exactly what those numbers mean.

...

That last line? Substitute 'propaganda' for 'policy'. I'll tell ya what the numbers mean. The numbers mean the troops are starting to get it. They're tired of being used as cannon fodder. We shouldn't even wait a year. Bring 'em home now and let the Iraqis do what they have to in order to pacify the place.

Great thanks to Maru for the link.

The Costs of Bush's Folly

Just to keep my outrage level up (none of this Skippy the Bush Kangaroo outrage fatigue for me, no sir! ;-)), I visit costofwar.com from the National Priorities Project to see if I could put the $ involved into numbers that I can wrap my head around. As of the time I visited the site, the total cost of Bush's Folly was $404,636,964,425, that is more than 9 years gross income for Microsoft, for example. To put it in terms that most of us can relate to I came up with these figures at the Cost of War site:

• we could have hired 7,012,407 additional public school teachers for one year.
• or we could have provided health insurance for 242,297,671 children for one year.
• or we could have built 3,643,378 additional housing units.
• or we could have provided 19,615,924 students four-year scholarships at public universities.
• or we could have paid for 53,594,362 children to attend a year of Head Start.

This puts the crimes of Bush & Co. in a light that is simple to understand. Too bad that the mainstream media sees fit to generally ignore it.

All of the above begs the following question. What, exactly, have we gotten in return? What makes giving up all of the potential worth it? If there is an answer other than, "nothing" to either of the above questions, I haven't come up with it yet.

R.

Special for Fixer

Stuff you can do with an old laptop:



I got a hunch that Fixer's "fun with old laptops" may include a loud BOOM! and a lot of altitude...

"Mr. Cheney, you and the President are the ones aiding the enemy"

Bluff Country Newspaper Group (MN)

For those of you who know me personally, you know I have been against the war in Iraq since the day we entered. Most of the time I keep my mouth shut about it, but enough is enough.

Our vice president is running off at the mouth again how Democrats are aiding the enemy and being unpatriotic by questioning the latest drivel coming out of his and President Bush's mouth - the value of the troop surge.

As a person too young to remember Vietnam, I had prayed that when we started down this misguided road that we would not end up in another unwinnable war.

Unfortunately, it seems that our government didn't learn anything from that conflict and thus we are repeating history:

o fighting in a country where we don't know the language;

o fighting for an ideal that is not embraced by the majority of the population with the influence and money to make peace happen;

o fighting an invisible enemy who is there one minute and gone the next into a house or neighborhood where he is protected and we are hated;

o fighting a culture that is as old as Christianity, that has been around before Jesus was born and that won't be changed in one year, 10 years or probably a 100 years.

I could go on but you get my point. I must say that society learned a lot from the Vietnam War. They learned that you could hate the war and the politics but love and support the soldiers who fight in it.

I respect every soldier who is out there doing his or her job, day after day, despite the hopelessness of his or her actions. I wish the soldiers were putting their lives on the line for something that really mattered.

Furthermore, lets talk about patriotism. Merriam-Webster defines it as "love for or devotion to one's country." That doesn't say anything about supporting one's president.

Our government should be ashamed of itself and make Halliburton repay the billions of dollars it has embezzled and misappropriated from the taxpayers and American government for projects never completed or mismanaged in Iraq.

Those funds should be turned over to the Veterans Administration to care for the thousands of new veterans already being failed by an overwhelmed and under-funded system.

How can this administration so willingly continue to put soldiers in harm's way and yet not pay for the very infrastructure that will be with them until the day they die?

Listening to some of the reports coming out of our major media outlets this weekend, made me realize our country should be ashamed at how we are letting these brave men and women down.

Shame on our government for allowing veterans at Walter Reed to lay in rat and mold infested facilities.

We have not even scratched the surface for the amount of money that will be needed to sustain these patriotic and deserving individuals for the balance of their lifetime.

Mr. Cheney, you are the one aiding the enemy, by stripping our economy, robbing our tax monies and disgracing our soldiers.

That young lady covered it pretty well, I think.

US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse

Guardian UK

An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.

For more on what a "hasty retreat" might look like, see Dunkirk and the Frozen Chosen.

"They know they are operating under a clock. They know they are going to hear a lot more talk in Washington about 'Plan B' by the autumn - meaning withdrawal. They know the next six-month period is their opportunity. And they say it's getting harder every day," he said.

US officials say they also have rising hopes of a breakthrough in Sunni-dominated Anbar province where tribal chiefs are increasingly hostile to al-Qaida and foreign fighters - and are looking to build bridges with moderate Shias.

But this week's US decision to join talks on Iraq with Iran and Syria, after previously refusing to do so, is nevertheless seen as an indication of the administration's growing alarm at the possibility of a historic strategic failure.

"Growing alarm", huh? Well, I'm glad something finally got the maladministration's attention. You only have to hit a mule in the head with a 2x4 a coupla times to do that, but then a mule is a lot smarter than Bush.

As I've said before, not only did Bush do the wrong thing by starting his war and occupation, he did the thing wrong out of the gate by letting Rumsfeld and Bremer be in charge. The Iraq misadventure was doomed from the start by a combination of idiocy and karma.

Thank you, Brit Press. I wonder if we'll see mention of this this in our own media.

How the U.S. is failing its Veterans

The Brain has posted over the past couple of years about the way our soldiers and veterans are treated by the government. Newsweek's cover story this week is about how their medical care, particularly after discharge for grievous wounds, is being bungled and mismanaged.

One reason to worry about a crush of new vets at the VA has to do with the proportion of wounded to dead Americans in Iraq. Though we tend to mark the grim timeline of the war by counting fatalities, what really distinguishes this conflict is how many soldiers don't die, but suffer appalling injuries. In Vietnam and Korea, about three Americans were wounded for every one who died. The ratio in WWII was nearly 2-1. In Iraq, 16 soldiers are wounded or get sick for every one who dies. The yawning ratio marks progress: better body armor and helmets are shielding more soldiers from fatal wounds. And advanced emergency care is keeping more of the wounded alive. The VA's Kussman says that soldiers who survive the first few minutes after an explosion have a 98 percent chance of surviving altogether. But that means an increased burden on the VA's health-care system.

The "increased burden" has led to delays in treatment that have caused Vets to commit suicide. Unconscionable and unacceptable.

There are quite a few of the Vets' personal stories in the article, some heartbreaking, some that totally piss you off, and some that are heroic.

Kenneth is a Marine master sergeant who'd been in the Corps for nearly 18 years. He was on his second tour in Iraq when a sniper bullet ricocheted off the metal hatch on his vehicle and hit him directly below the right eye, grazing the front of his brain and exiting near his left ear. Among other things, he was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, which has become the signature wound of the Iraq war. Tonia had to fight the Marine Corps to keep him from being discharged, figuring he'd get better medical care if he remained in active service. But some of his treatment has been outsourced to the VA.

One of the tricks she learned early on was to demand photocopies of her husband's records—every exam, every X-ray, every diagnosis—and personally carry the file from appointment to appointment. "I don't know if there is a more formal protocol for transferring documents, but I know that what I brought ... was definitely put to use." When Sargent was transferred to the VA's lauded Polytrauma Center in Palo Alto, Calif., doctors there encouraged her to go home to Camp Pendleton near San Diego and treat his stay at the hospital as if it was a deployment. "After two weeks, they asked me how long I was planning to stay with my husband," she says. "They said it was his rehab, not mine. But I needed to learn how to care for him, and he suffered from extreme anxiety without me." She pushed back, staying in Palo Alto until he completed his care.

That Marine is damn lucky to have a wife like that.

And just why do you suppose the system is failing these troops so badly?

But veterans' support groups and even some former and current VA insiders believe there's a reluctance in the Bush administration to deal openly with the long-term costs of the war. (All told, Bilmes projects it could cost as much as $600 billion to care for GWOT veterans over the course of their lifetimes.) That reluctance, they say, trickles down to the VA, where top managers are politically appointed. Secretary Jim Nicholson, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who was chosen by Bush in 2005, tends to be the focus of this criticism.

The senior VA manager who did not want to be named criticizing superiors told NEWSWEEK: "He's a political appointee and he needs to respond to the White House's direction." Steve Robinson of Veterans for America levels the accusation more directly. "Why doesn't the VA have a projection of casualties for the wars? Because it would be a political bombshell for Nicholson to estimate so many casualties." The VA denies political considerations are involved in its budgeting or planning. Nicholson declined to be interviewed but Matt Burns, a spokesman for the VA, called Robinson's comments "nonsensical and inflammatory," adding: "The VA, in its budgeting process, carefully prepares for future costs so that we can continue to deliver the quality health care and myriad benefits veterans have earned."

Sounds like more of the politics, obfuscation, spin, and lies we've come to expect from this administration, all the while runnin' lip service on "the best care we can offer our veterans".

Shorter: Just more Bush criminal incompetence.

The article is quite long and well done, I think. Since I've saved you a trip to the newsstand and $4.95, please go read it.

It's the bare tip of the iceberg. The problem is going to be with us for the foreseeable future and beyond until enough people are made aware of it often enough that the collective conscience of the nation is disturbed enough to demand what's right for our Veterans. The sooner the better.

Summit

After a tour of our western offices this past summer, our dear friend Lurch of Main and Central will be visiting Alternate Brain World Headquarters this weekend. Well, it won't be a summit but we're having lunch on Saturday.

Another note, my trusty laptop, which I use more than the desktop PC in my office, looks like it's finally bitten the dust after 4 years of being dragged all over Europe, aboard ship, and all over the place here. The reason I mention this is my response to email might be a little slow over the next couple days as I figure whether it's more cost effective to fix or to just get another one.

It's all in the fine print...

Outrage

Over in Morning Martini, Pissed-off Patricia, in relation to this post asked: "Are you outraged yet?" In the comments I started detailing all of the reasons why I'm outraged and became so pissed-off doing it that it evolved into a full length post. Here it is:

One of my earliest reactions to 9/11 was "How are they going to use this to their advantage?". So I have been outraged for at least 5+ years. I wasn't enamored of sending the military into Afghanistan, that was a job for covert operatives and still is. So I was little more outraged about that. Iraq outraged me without question. The photo-op seizure of Baghdad and toppling of Saddam's statue while the city was being looted upped the outrage even more. The sham that was "Mission Accomplished". The mismanagement of the peace from the gitgo. The losing of New Orleans. The 3,000 plus American lives. The 50,000 or so Iraqi civilian lives. The lack of protective armor for the Humvees. The lack of vests for the troops. The unreported military deaths because wounded that die outside of Iraq don't count in the total. The mortgage that BushCo is buying that my great-grandchildren's great-grandchildren will have trouble paying off. The erosion of our rights. The stolen elections. The tragedy that is Walter Reed army hospital. The "Do Nothing But Rubber Stamp Administration Requests" Congress. The Dems taking impeachment off the table. And so much more that it makes my head spin over and over again. Shit, yeah, I'm outraged and I will continue to be outraged until I see BushCo in shackles. And I will be outraged until I die that the American people let the 2nd election get close enough to steal.

R.

What'll they think of next?

Bierkatapult



The guy's a genius! He'll sell a million of 'em!

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Dems Trade Lieberman for Hagel
And a congressman to be named later.

Blair Announces Withdrawal of British Troops From Iraq
Congressman wants English muffins renamed "freedom muffins."

Report: Yellowstone Air Quality Improving
White House blames snowmobile restrictions.

Unnoticed Provision in Defense Budget Makes it Easier to Declare Martial Law
You'll be notified where to go and what you can take with you.

Much more.

Had a Blast at Bagram

The LATimes has the story of the bomb that went off a mile from The Dick at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan. That's the closest he's ever been to danger in his life. I hope he shit his pants.

They missed, dammit.

He sent the Taliban a 'Thank You' card.

I'd like to send them a card too. Does Hallmark make "Better Luck Next Time" ones?

Deputy SecDef Recommends End War Before '08 Elections

Al Kamen (WaPo)

The Democrats and other cut-and-runners are in disarray over their next move on Iraq. And they keep jabbering that the administration has no plan for the war other than the same old, same old.

Nonsense. The Pentagon, in a series of recent memos, is making the fight against terrorism synonymous with Iraq (although it has been pretty much confirmed that Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in the Sept. 11 attacks) and has issued a clear call for getting the job done by the end of next year.

In a Feb. 15 memo, England spotted a key fact that most everyone in this town has overlooked. "At noon on Jan. 20, 2009," he wrote, "many of the civilian Department of Defense (DOD) leadership positions will transition to a new Administration Team. This change, coupled with the normal rotation of military leadership, could disrupt many of the management process changes currently underway in the Department."

So "to ensure that warfighters and taxpayers receive maximum benefit from on-going initiatives," England suggested, "it would be highly desirable to complete current projects by the summer/fall of 2008." (my em)

I don't think Bush's War, the major "current project", will end as long as he's in office, but if it ends prior to that to prevent "disruption of management process changes" at the Pentagon, I'm all for it. I'm not going to hold my breath.

On the other hand, maybe England's just seen the writing on the wall and figured out they'd better get any projects done before the elections because they're all gonna get kicked out on their asses afterwards, and rightly so.

There's for damn sure gonna be some "disruption of management process changes" under the next real President.

Supporting the Troops. Not.

From Navy Times:

"Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media."

"Soldiers say their sergeant major gathered troops at 6 p.m. Monday to tell them they must follow their chain of command when asking for help with their medical evaluation paperwork, or when they spot mold, mice or other problems in their quarters"

"The soldiers said they were also told their first sergeant has been relieved of duty, and that all of their platoon sergeants have been moved to other positions at Walter Reed."

A truly wonderful way of supporting the troops. Horrible conditions uncovered at a major medical facility? The Pentagon's response: lock up the folks that are paying the price for Bush's Folly and see to it that their words are filtered. A wonderful place thê U.S. is becoming under the current administration. Not.

A tip of my Jersey hat to Silver Owl (in the comments) for the link and to nitpicker for the link to the Navy Times article.

R.

Walter Reed patients told to keep quiet

Army Times

Soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center's Medical Hold Unit say they have been told they will wake up at 6 a.m. every morning and have their rooms ready for inspection at 7 a.m., and that they must not speak to the media.

"Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media," one Medical Hold Unit soldier said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The Pentagon also clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN and the Discovery Channel, saying in an e-mail to spokespeople: "It will be in most cases not appropriate to engage the media while this review takes place," referring to an investigation of the problems at Walter Reed.

What are they gonna do to soldiers who talk to the media? Give 'em a haircut and new legs and send 'em to Iraq?

A History Lesson for SecState

Go see Keith Olbermann go off on Condilieza Rice after her stupid remarks about Hitler, WWII, and the Marshall Plan, in his words "more in snark than anger".

Also at Raw Story.

One sentence

William Rivers Pitt describes the Bush maladministration in one long sentence.

...just because our phones are tapped and our homes are no longer protected from unreasonable searches, just because we torture at will, just because we detain forever and use habeas corpus like so much toilet paper, just because signing statements have dismantled the separation of powers one brick at a time, just because no page is safe in a Republican Congress, just because no bribe is too small in a Republican Congress, just because a Democratic resurgence in 2006 is only a tiny beginning and not any kind of an end, because these Bush boys have no intention of slowing down or backing off...

...just because our national reputation is ravaged and our future has been sold out from under us, just because Truman's wartime economic footing has morphed into a machine that Eisenhower would recognize in horror as the very thing he warned us about before he left, just because the whole system now requires us to manufacture wars if none are available because the system itself has been wired to feed the beast no matter the consequences, just because television tells you not to worry, look at these breasts or this shaved starlet's head, or this shiny thing, look here, shhh, be silent, be still, sleep...

...doesn't mean We The People are finished, because all of this is why "We The People" was written down in the first place, and though the day is late and the road is long and the chances for success are slim, We The People are here to stay, so strap in and look out, because we are just getting started, and the next sentence will be ours to write.

I hope 'the next sentence' is given by a judge and has words in it like 'gallows', 'firing squad', and 'penitentiary' just before the phrase '...return our democracy to us'.

Wishy-washy?

More here.

R.

Fixer who?

Sorry I've been a little light on my content over the last couple days. A few reasons:

1. Mrs. F has been in Charlotte for a week so I'm doing double duty.

2. Since I'm nearing the end of posting my novel The Captains at The Practical Press, I've been going over some of my old manuscripts, trying to find one suitable to follow.

I should be back to regular duty by the weekend.

Quote of the Day

From TRex on hardly-ever-right-wing blogs, via Lurch:

Wingnuts are like herpes sores. They might disappear for a while, but every moment you enjoy without them around brings you closer to the next painful, embarrassing, incapacitating outbreak.

His dissertation is pretty good. Go read.

Snow Job

No, not the White House Press Secretary this time!

Click to waaay embiggen!

I have shoveled these goddam berms out of my driveway for 26 years now, but this is the first time I've ever done three of these things in one day. As you can see, I only got rid of enough to get the car out. The yardstick, stuck down several inches into the snow, is for scale.

The berms are deposited legally in my driveway by the town. The law is cleverly written so they can "store" snow there. If you want to get out of your driveway, it's all yours. There are snow plow accessories available that prevent this, but they cost money and slow down the plowing operation. I don't blame the plow weenies (thanks, Fixer!). There aren't that many of them, and they have a lot of miles to cover. Most of them have been awake and on the job for three days now. All the snow in the pictures is since Sunday.

The berm is compacted snow deposited off the side of the blade of a snow plow or grader at pretty high speed. A homeowner-grade snowthrower won't touch it. You have to break it up with a shovel into pieces the snowthrower will throw. That hole in the berm, done 3 times, represents over 5 hours of hard work. Add in the fact that I also blew out my driveway three times, it's more like 8 hours. Me no like hard work!

Especially in a cold, windy snowstorm. I started the first clearing job at 7:30 Monday morning and completed the third at 1:30 Tuesday morning. If I had gotten up this A.M. to find a fourth one, I would have called up Fixer and had him send me a "DuPont Snowthrower".

I kept the clothes dryer going all day. When I got too wet and cold, I took a break, changed clothes, reloaded dryer, had coffee and a smoke until I thawed out, and back at it. I told Mrs. G that if I didn't show up for an inordinate length of time, to go look for the (hopefully!) tallest pile of ice and snow and hit it with an ax handle.

In the midst of all this, about 11:30 Sunday night, I had just cleared my driveway for the second time that day, and noticed a coupla SUVs in the middle of the street with their four-ways flashing. They had been there for some time. They were trying to get up the worst driveway in the neighborhood to spend a ski week at their absentee-owner friend's $700K second-home "cabin". Nobody had called the plow service that they were coming. They were trying to shovel access up, and I do mean 'up', a 150-foot driveway with a foot and a half of packed snow. Their 4-wheel-drives wouldn't make it more than 50 feet and then high-center. They'd spend their whole vacation doing that, so I felt sorry for them, and in my best neighborly fashion, I volunteered to try to do it with my little sneezer 8-really-old-and-tired horsepower snowthrower. Up four feet, back three feet, up four feet, back three feet. Finally got to the top, a real "Little Engine That Could" deal. It was a little easier going downhill, and I finally got them access. The guy was so dazzled he gave me $100, which I graciously accepted after much protest. Protest, yeah, right. I got to bed about 2AM. The plow came Monday morning, but they're bermed-in snowbound with another foot and a half today. Welcome to Truckee, folks.

I think you can tell what I've been up to for the last coupla days. Every bone, every muscle, in my 61-year-old body is howling at me. Thank God for Ibuprofen!

I gave up complaining about these berms years ago, but this was kind of a "perfect storm" of them. I just wanted to share. Oh, yeah, the Sun came out and it's a beautiful day. That makes it worth all the hassle.

Update:

Berm No. 4 arrived while I was taking a nap this afternoon. I noticed it at about a quarter to five. Since a big part of my reason for being is to provide Mrs. G with an accessible driveway, I turned to. Luckily for me it wasn't as big as the other ones. I was still standing there with my shovel (a trick I learned from highway workers) when she pulled in. Whew! Just in time, but it's embarrassing for me to have her actually catch me working!

I also got reminded of things I know during my snow clearing adventures:

1. Check the snowthrower gas tank before you get eighty feet from the garage in a snowstorm in the dark, and

2. Due to residual snow in the augur/discharge mechanism, don't squeeze the augur drive lever in the garage! Yeesh.

Surprise! (not) It's about oil

From Guardian Unlimited:

"Iraq poised to hand control of oil fields to foreign firms"

Anybody wanna guess to which countries "foreign" refers? Here's a little clue:

"Baghdad is under pressure from Britain and the US to pass an oil law which would hand long-term control of Iraq's energy assets to foreign multinationals, according to campaigners."

Wait a minnit! I thought this was about WMD. Or was it democracy for Iraq? No, wait, weren't there a dozen other reasons? No one ever mentioned oil. How could this be?

And how do the "independent" Iraqis feel about this?

"Iraqi trades unions have called for the country's oil reserves - the second-largest in the world - to be kept in public hands. "

Makes sense doesn't it. "Freely elected" government and all that. But wait:

"But a leaked draft of the oil law, seen by The Observer, would see the government sign away the right to exploit its untapped fields in so-called exploration contracts, which could then be extended for more than 30 years.

Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has admitted that the government has discussed the wording of the Iraqi law with Britain's oil giants."

More here. Prepare to read it, shake your head and think "I knew this all along."


R.

Brothers in Arms Again: Bush Faction Arming Al Qaeda to Thwart Iran

Chris Floyd at Empire Burlesque, whose motto is "High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium". I like that.

Here's the upshot of Sy Hersh's latest piece in the New Yorker: George W. Bush is working with, paying, arming and training -- directly and by proxy -- violent terrorist groups in league with Osama bin Laden.

I have been writing here for years about the Bush Administration's openly declared intent to arm and fund violent militia groups all over the world, especially in "inaccessible" places where the US cannot operate openly. Hersh has confirmed this "strategy" several times in his reporting.

But as we've also noted many times, this political "philosophy" is by no means unique to the Bush Family faction. It is resolutely bipartisan, and deeply embedded in the mindset of the American Establishment. The Bushes are nothing but second-rate camp followers, empty shells and non-entities, originating nothing, ignorant and cynical in equal measure, their only unusual trait being how open they are in their scorn for the worthless rabble and the bullshit Constitution that the crypto-Commies like Madison and Jefferson foisted on the proper rulers of the country. Otherwise, they simply regurgitate the unprocessed prejudices, unexamined assumptions and vulgar ambitions of the clique that spawned them.

This comes as no surprise to any of us, I am sure, but Mr. Floyd says it well. I put nothing past the Bushes and their ilk in their quest for riches and power and fuck the rest of us.

Please go read the rest. Many links.

Talking ...

It's about the only thing the conservatives are good at. I talked about this yesterday, about the war supporters who were big on talk, short on action. Wolcott expands on Fox 'News' and their war cheerleading squad:

... Talking big is the only calisthenic exercise neoconservatives get apart from practicing their "Hail, Caesar!" salutes, but to hear them tell it they're the ones of trim purpose with vital essences coursing through their veins while the rest of us steep in our tepid, watery neo-Weimar malaise ...

These are the ones who should be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. Yes, I have my problems with the idiot, everyday folks who still support this war, but ignorance can be dealt with. It's the paid shills operating under cover of a 'news' organization. Basically those who have sold out the well-being of America for a price.

And an aside, we got about 2 1/2 inches of snow during the night. At 3:30 this morning, I was awakened by the dog licking my face. Have I mentioned the Cattle Dog loves snow? I couldn't get dressed fast enough. It was like "Dad, it snowed! Come on. Hurry, dad, let's go! It SNOWED!" Oy. Now I have to dig the car out.

Roots

Raw Story

In a revelation that will stun the nation, the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of America's most powerful black leaders, has unearthed a shattering family secret - his ancestors were slaves owned by relatives of the late South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond.

It is an ironic twist of fate that inexorably links one of the most vocal civil rights activists and an icon of Deep South segregation.

Keep digging. I got a hunch the serpent in the Garden of Eden was a Republican.

I have a friend who was one of very few Afro-Americans in the Nevada Highway Patrol. One day he was at the Washoe County Jail and noticed that one of the inmates had the same slightly unusual last name as his. He went to see the guy, who was white. In an explanation of how they might have ended up with the same name, my friend told the guy, "Maybe your great-grandfather owned mine".

Ball Blast

A comment about the mess at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Editor & Publisher:

I have a suggested solution: line up the executive branch from the prez on down and the members of congress and the senate along with the Miltary Officers with oversight responsibility, have them all drop their pants and have expert rifle(wo)men shoot off one testicle of each one in line. Have them treated in these facilities.

I think it would take a marksman with extremely good eyesight and a 10x scope to hit such a small target! A dinner plate at 500 yards presents a larger sight picture than these guys' huevos at three feet.

Sign up or shut up

NYT:

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon plans to send more than 14,000 National Guard troops back to Iraq next year, shortening their off-duty time to meet the demands of President George W. Bush's buildup, Defense Department officials said.

...

Now, at this point, when we can't get enough recruits, when we're going back on the promises made to our National Guard, when the White House won't call for a draft, it's time for all you able-bodied war supporters to do your duty and enlist.

And don't give me those tired equivocations where 'you support the police and fire departments, but you don't join up'. The facts are this. You've been cheerleading this war from the get go. You've been eager to have others go 'kill the ragheads' while you sit back in the comfort of your homes, enjoying your family, your freedom to say all sorts of stupid shit, and not really have to worry about the war until it comes time for you to run your mouth some more.

Well, we're out of 'other folks' to go fight this thing. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel by taking criminals and nut cases as it is. Contributing to the Rethug spin ain't gonna cut it anymore. Shit's bad and it's gonna get worse while you put another magnet on your car and tell everyone who will listen that 'we should just nuke the bastids'. If you want to do that so badly, join up and do your part because there's a buncha guys over there who want to do what you're doing right now. Sitting on your ass reading the Sunday paper or surfing the interwebs with your pants around your ankles.

The folks in the military did not sign up for this. They did not sign up to have their lives squandered in a war without end, in deployment after deployment. The Guard guys certainly didn't, volunteering to spend the spare time they have to help their communities, not act as regular Army troops for years on end. People, your fellow Americans, are dying over there for no good reason and you're cheering them on? No. Time to walk the walk or STFU.

Conscience ...

Nice to know not all the flag officers are neocons. This should give whatever Bush supporters that are left a bit of pause:

SOME of America’s most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.

...

A generals’ revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented. “American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,” said a Pentagon source. Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.

...

However, army chiefs fear an attack on Iran would backfire on American troops in Iraq and lead to more terrorist attacks, a rise in oil prices and the threat of a regional war.

...

For them to let this leak out means they are worried over what will be left of the military after the Chimp and Cheney get done with it. Nothing good can come from an attack on Iran. I hope the Dems, and the Rethugs who have some sort of conscience, realize what this means and do whatever it takes to get these idiots out of 1600.

Update:

And read the above with regard to this:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Despite the Bush administration's insistence it has no plans to go to war with Iran, a Pentagon panel has been created to plan a bombing attack that could be implemented within 24 hours of getting the go-ahead from President George W. Bush, The New Yorker magazine reported in its latest issue.

The special planning group was established within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in recent months, according to an unidentified former U.S. intelligence official cited in the article by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in the March 4 issue.

...

Can you say, 'Office of Special Plans' and 'White House Iraq Group'? I thought you could. Same old song and dance. Let's hope Congress gets it too.