Utah Woman Sells Forehead As Billboard

Just when you think you have heard it all, here is another unusual Ebay story -- this one with a close to home connection.

Kari Smith recently auctioned off a very visible part of her body, to be used as advertising space. And the prime piece of real estate in this case... is her forehead.

Smith decided to sell her forehead as ad space, in order to send her young son to private school. So she listed her forehead on Ebay, and it wasn't long before she had a winning bidder.GoldenPalace.com purchased the rights to Kari's forehead, and decided to have the company name tattooed there.

"We're always looking for ordinary people doing extraordinary things," said Jon Wolf of GoldenPalace.com. "And this is definitely an extraordinary thing that she's
doing."
...
By the way, the tattoo on Kari's head is permanent. The final price GoldenPalace paid for her forehead space: $10,000.It is believed that Kari is the first person ever to have a permanent tattoo scrawled on her head for the purpose of advertising.

Excellent move, ma'am. Perhaps that private school will try to teach your kid about dignity, integrity and self-respect -- things he sure as hell ain't gonna get at home.

And for those of you keeping score, somebody at Golden Palace has a serious eBay addiction, having already bought the infamous Virgin Mary on grilled cheese.

Military recruiters want ...Jenna

If Uncle Sam wants you, he has to be able to find you - Yahoo! News/USA Today

Last fall, Charles Moskos of Northwestern University, a prominent expert on military manpower, asked a group of recruiters what would most help them: tripling bonuses or enlisting presidential daughter Jenna Bush.

The recruiters' choice was unanimous: Jenna Bush.

I'd even settle for getting them into the Reserves, though not in a "Champagne Unit" like dear old Dad wound up in.

Mainstream acknowledgement of the rank (pun intended) hypocrisy of the administration and war hawks in general is rare. Kudos to USA Today for running it.

The next war has already started

New piece up @ Raw Story (a week late, but such is life on the left).

U.S. Accused in Iraqi Journalist's Death

U.S. troops allegedly killed an Iraqi television director Tuesday when he drove near a U.S. convoy, colleagues and a hospital official said. The U.S. military said it had no reports of the incident. Ahmed Wael Bakri, a program director for al-Sharqiya television, was the third Iraqi journalist allegedly killed in similar incidents in the past week.

The list of journalists killed in Iraq is long. An amazing number of them died by American hands. And of course there are a bunch we have shot at but either missed or merely wounded -- Giuliana Sgrena, for one.

Seems to me that there are only two ways of looking at this: either the US really is trying to whack as many journalists as it it can, or the violent deaths of 45 non-combatants really was an accident - which must mean that Iraqi civilians are getting mowed down in huge numbers, but we don't hear about the bloodshed unless the victim is employed by a news outlet.

Bank of America to buy MBNA

Bank of America Corp., the second- largest U.S. bank by assets, agreed to buy MBNA Corp. for about $35 billion in stock and cash to challenge Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in credit cards.

Does BofA get Joe Biden with their financial Happy Meal? Or do they have to pay extra?

Failure is Always an Option

Sayeth Billmon:

Under the circumstances, the mindless chants of "failure is not an option" are starting to sound like the desperate prayers of the terminally ill. Failure is always an option -- particularly for morons who launch a war of choice under the impression that they can't possibly lose it.

Is the war hopelessly lost? I tend to think so, although I'm realistic enough to admit that I don't have all the facts, and couldn't interpret them all correctly even if I did. I know there are some military analysts whose opinions I respect who think the war is lost -- analysts such as William S. Lind, who, for all his wing nuttery on cultural and social issues, is one smart cookie when it comes to "Fourth Generation" warfare:

"There's nothing that you can do in Iraq today that will work," said Lind, one of the original Fourth Generation Warfare authors. "That situation is irretrievably lost."

I am starting to believe that the wall of stupid could actually come down.

Harris camp feels 'a stab in the back'

from The Hill:

Frustrated with the White House and a key Republican, supporters of Rep. Katherine Harris' (R-Fla.) 2006 Senate campaign lashed out at the administration yesterday for seeking to convince another prominent GOP official to enter the race.

"It's unimaginable that the White House folks and the National Republican Senatorial Committee would be so disloyal to Katherine Harris, especially after all she has done for the Bush family and the Republican Party," a Florida political operative who supports Harris said. "It's unconscionable and a stab in the back."

Harris backers are irritated that State House Speaker Allan Bense met with White House chief of staff Karl Rove and NRSC Chairwoman Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.) this week to discuss challenging Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) next year.

The operative added, "If it is true, they should be ashamed and embarrassed, considering she stepped aside at their request for the president and Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) in 2004. It's her turn."

People loyal to Harris claim her move not to run last year demonstrated her loyalty, noting that the president has already won his reelection bid. Some in the White House were concerned that a Harris run in 2004 would have hurt Bush's chances in the Sunshine State.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

If true, this is a story without a downside-- (1) It couldn't happen to a nicer or more deserving person; (2) publicizing the way La Famiglia Bush promises its foot soldiers more than it delivers in order to get its dirty work done is an unalloyed good; which (3) should help encourage the legions of shafted cast-offs to leak, backstab and otherwise get even; which might actually, finally work, now that (4) the timing couldn't be better, what with the apparent crumbling of the wall of invulnerability and the increasing willingness of the press to notice all the clothes the emperor isn't wearing.

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

'Hotel' targets Souter's home

Concord Monitor Online

letter that emerged yesterday from the fax machine in the Weare Town Hall has thrust Supreme Court Justice David Souter's beloved farmhouse into a national debate over property rights.

Souter, a longtime Weare resident, joined in a court decision last week that allows governments to seize private property from one owner and turn it over to another if doing so would benefit a community. Now, an outraged Californian wants to test the ruling - by asking Weare's selectmen to let him replace Souter's farm with a posh hotel.

"A recent Supreme Court decision. . . . clears the way for this land to be taken," Logan Darrow Clements wrote in a letter faxed to town officials yesterday. "The justification for such an eminent domain action is that our hotel will better serve the public interest as it will bring in economic development and higher tax revenue to Weare."

I tend to side with Souter in many cases. This ain't one of them. Sure is a bitch when the chickens come home to roost....

True Lies

More cooked books

Board: Teflon Cancer Risks Downplayed - Yahoo! News

A controversial chemical used by DuPont Co. to make the nonstick substance Teflon poses more of a cancer risk than indicated in a draft assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency, an independent review board has found.

The EPA stated earlier this year that its draft risk assessment of perfluorooctanoic acid and its salts found "suggestive evidence" of potential human carcinogenicity, based on animal studies.

In a draft report released Monday, the majority of members on an EPA scientific advisory board that reviewed the agency's report concluded that PFOA, also known as C-8, is "likely" to be carcinogenic to humans, and that the EPA should conduct cancer risk assessments for a variety of tumors found in mice and rats.

Environmentalists hailed the report, which will be discussed by EPA officials and SAB members in a public teleconference July 6, as an important step in holding government regulators and the Delaware-based chemical giant accountable.

And there's this:

The Labor Department worked for more than a year to maintain secrecy for studies that were critical of working conditions in Central America, the region the Bush administration wants in a new trade pact.

The contractor hired by the department in 2002 to conduct the studies has become a major opponent of the administration's proposed Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA.

The government-paid studies concluded that countries proposed for free-trade status have poor working environments and fail to protect workers' rights. The department dismissed the conclusions as inaccurate and biased, according to government and contractor documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

It really never ends.

Spinal transplant successful; MSM stands up

As War Shifts, So Does the Message - LA Times

President Bush on Tuesday retooled his original argument for the Iraq war, justifying the U.S. military presence there as the solution to a problem that critics say the war itself caused.

More than two years ago, Bush argued that Saddam Hussein's control over Iraq could make the nation a haven for terrorists. But in his nationally televised speech, Bush asserted that the tumult that has followed Hussein's removal created the same threat.

In the lead-up to the war, Bush presented the invasion of Iraq primarily as a means of preventing the Iraqi dictator from providing nuclear, biological or chemical weapons to terrorists.

After coalition forces failed to find evidence of such weapons, and several investigations did not uncover meaningful links between Hussein and Al Qaeda, the president increasingly stressed the possibility that creating a democracy in Iraq could encourage democratic reform across the Middle East.

In his speech Tuesday before a crowd of soldiers at Ft. Bragg, N.C., Bush still emphasized the cause of democracy. He also mixed optimism about conditions in Iraq with sober assessments of the continuing challenge there.

But mostly Bush defended the war as a means of preventing another terrorist attack on the United States. The most striking argument Bush offered for his policy in Iraq was that the Mideast nation could become a sanctuary for terrorists if U.S. forces withdrew.

By completing "the mission," Bush declared, "we will prevent Al Qaeda and other foreign terrorists from turning Iraq into what Afghanistan was under the Taliban — a safe haven from which they could launch attacks on America and our friends."

That argument drew instant scorn from some Democrats, who argued that Bush was defending the continued military operations on the basis of a threat that did not exist before the invasion.

"Most Americans are aware that the hotbed of terrorism never existed in Iraq until we got there and it has, in fact, grown increasingly as we are there," Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Bush's Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, told CNN after the speech.

I had CNN on this morning. Limbaugh squeeze and normally reliable shill Daran Kagan had Republican Congressman Robin Hayes on arguing that Saddam was actually linked to 9/11. Kagan called him on it -- made it very clear he was utterly full of shit.

This is a remarkable turn of events. If major newspapers and the station of 24-hour Missing White Women can stand up, anything is possible.

Lakers draft 17-year old

Instead of shooting for immediate help following one of the worst seasons in franchise history, the Los Angeles Lakers looked to the future Tuesday night, making 17-year-old centre Andrew Bynum the youngest player ever taken in the NBA draft.

And if that isn't enought to ensure that Kobe Bryant is no longer the most immature player in a Lakers uniform, recently re-hired coach Phil Jackson has indicated that he is prepared to ask whoever is staying at Neverland on any given night to suit up.

Captives: Terrorists hoped for Bush re-election

via the Jerusalem Post:

Two French journalists who were held hostage in Iraq told a British documentary program that their captors believed George W. Bush's re-election as US president would help radicalize Iraqis.

Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, who were seized in August and released after four months, told the British Broadcasting Corp.'s "Panorama" program that they were allowed to interview the leader of an Islamic militant cell within the group that seized them.

"We felt we were on planet bin Laden," Malbrunot said on the program, which airs Wednesday night.

The cell leader trained with terror leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and told them the insurgents supported a Bush presidency because they believed it meant that "there will be confrontation, occupation and radicalization of the Iraqi people," Malbrunot said.

Remember that old saying about how the definition of a liberal is "someone who is usually right, but too soon"?

Another Poorman gem

The music kicks in, and President Bush begins dancing. The tune is recognizable now: it’s Gene Kelly’s classic “Singing in the Rain”. The lyrics are somewhat changed, however.

Cuz Clinton is to blame
Yes, Clinton is to blame
All of our problems
Are easy to explain.
If you’re blaming me for stuff.
Just bring it to halt
Because all bad things that happen
Are Bill Clinton’s fault.

Who knew he was a musical theater person?

White House spiked 2002, 2003 Zarqawi hits to avoid mooting war plans

MSNBC.com

With Tuesday’s attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq.

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

This is a seriously old story, of course. But I guess Shrub's plunging poll numbers are the special sauce adding a tiny bit of calcium into osteoporous and brittle spines of the MSM. And so we get yet another story that should, all by itself, spell impeachment, and be acknowledged as a smoking gun.

Any more smoking guns, and the more environmentally sensitive among us are going to have to start requesting that a No Smoking Gun Section of the blogosphere be created.

Oh, never mind. Already exists.

Britons voiced Iraq concerns behind scenes

from MercuryNews.com

Lots of folks have been mining the Downing Street memos for nuggets of useful information. This article focuses on how right some Brits were (in private). I was especially struck by this little pearl of wisdom from

David Manning, Blair's chief foreign-policy adviser at the time, wrote to the prime minister on March 14, 2002, after he returned from meetings with Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, and her staff. "They may agree that failure isn't an option, but this does not mean they will necessarily avoid it.''

This observation really captures Bushopia in a nutshell. Tough talk is believed to be the equivalent of action; rose-tinted perception more tangible than statistics and frank assessment -- and body bags.

In 1999, Bush Demanded A Timetable

from Think Progress:

In 1999, George W. Bush criticized President Clinton for not setting a timetable for exiting Kosovo, and yet he refuses to apply the same standard to his war.

George W. Bush, 4/9/99:

“Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”

And on the specific need for a timetable, here’s what Bush said then and what he says now:

George W. Bush, 6/5/99

“I think it’s also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn.”

VERSUS

George W. Bush, 6/24/05:

“It doesn’t make any sense to have a timetable. You know, if you give a
timetable, you’re — you’re conceding too much to the enemy.”

I know, I know -- we're so boorishly reality-based. And the GWOT changed everything. And criticising Clinton's wars was A-OK because Clinton WAS the enemy.

But poll numbers seem to indicate that, one by one, Americans are swearing off the Kool Aid.

General admits to secret air war

via Sunday Times - Times Online:

THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.
Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started.



The nine months of allied raids “laid the foundations” for the allied victory, Moseley said. They ensured that allied forces did not have to start the war with a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions.

If those raids exceeded the need to maintain security in the no-fly zones of southern and northern Iraq, they would leave President George W Bush and Tony Blair vulnerable to allegations that they had acted illegally.

NOW can we start talking seriously about impeachment?

Iran President-Elect Vows to Pursue Nukes

President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Sunday to pursue a peaceful nuclear program — an effort the United States maintains is really a cover for trying to build atomic bombs.

When our subtle and nuanced foreign policy consists of (a) declaring war on a tactic (terrorism) than can be deployed as easily by folks we like as by folks we don't, and (b) pushing regime change and staking all on a process-focused abstraction (democracy), what do we say about this?

Not much.

Oh, and congrats, Mr. Preznit. You had a key role in electing the Islamic hardliner. Your next war appears to be on schedule, but... who's gonna fight it?

Repeal the 22nd?

via L.A. Daily News:

President George W. Bush for life? Well, not really. But Democrat Rep. Howard Berman would be willing to let presidents give it their best shot.

The Van Nuys congressman this week teamed up with a small group of lawmakers trying to repeal the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms in office.

What Berman REALLY means is that he likes the idea of Clinton in '08 -- BILL CLinton.

John Cleese can still bring it

I assumed since he was a business type that he was likely to favor Bush. Seems not:

In the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy.

Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections.

The rest of it, alas, is not about politics, but about his edicts for us as renewed citizens of the UK. But I thought this bitingly correct and vintage Python:

The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer", and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager". The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen Knat's Urine", with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Knat's Urine". This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen, Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

...but then...

On September 11, 2001, shortly after emerging from his hidey hole and assuming the mantle of Codpiece in Chief, George W. Bush got himself on TV to say this:

"The search is under way for those who are behind these evil acts. I have directed the full resources of our intelligence and law-enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice," Bush said in a nationally televised address less than 12 hours after what is being called the worst act of terrorism in America's history. "We will make no distinction between those who committed these acts and those who harbor them."

Last week, it was annouced that the CIA had prepared a report that found that

Iraq may prove to be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was in al-Qaeda's early days, a new, classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency has warned. The CIA says this is because it is serving as a real-world laboratory for militants to improve their skills in urban combat.

The intelligence assessment, completed last month and circulated among government agencies, made clear it the view that the conflict was likely to disperse to other countries and Iraqi and foreign combatants were more adept and better organised than they were before the conflict.

Congressional and intelligence officials said the assessment had argued that since the US invasion of 2003, Iraq had in many ways assumed the role played by Afghanistan during the rise of al-Qaeda during the 1980s and 1990s, as a magnet and a proving ground for extremists.

In other words, Iraq, as a direct result of the policies of one George W. Bush, must be said to be harboring terrorists.

So.... who should we go after?

Turin Shroud confirmed as a fake

Turin Shroud confirmed as a fake: French science magazine - Yahoo! News

PARIS (AFP) - A French magazine said it had carried out experiments that proved the Shroud of Turin, believed by some Christians to be their religion's holiest relic, was a fake.

"A mediaeval technique helped us to make a Shroud," Science et Vie (Science and Life) said in its July issue.
...
It bears the faint image of a blood-covered man with holes in his hand and wounds in his body and head, the apparent result of being crucified, stabbed by a Roman spear and forced to wear a crown of thorns.

In 1988, scientists carried out carbon-14 dating of the delicate linen cloth and concluded that the material was made some time between 1260 and 1390. Their study prompted the then archbishop of Turin, where the Shroud is stored, to admit that the garment was a hoax. But the debate sharply revived in January this year.

Drawing on a method previously used by skeptics to attack authenticity claims about the Shroud, Science et Vie got an artist to do a bas-relief -- a sculpture that stands out from the surrounding background -- of a Christ-like face.

A scientist then laid out a damp linen sheet over the bas-relief and let it dry, so that the thin cloth was moulded onto the face.

Using cotton wool, he then carefully dabbed ferric oxide, mixed with gelatine, onto the cloth to make blood-like marks. When the cloth was turned inside-out, the reversed marks resulted in the famous image of the crucified Christ.

Gelatine, an animal by-product rich in collagen, was frequently used by Middle Age painters as a fixative to bind pigments to canvas or wood.

The imprinted image turned out to be wash-resistant, impervious to temperatures of 250 C (482 F) and was undamaged by exposure to a range of harsh chemicals, including bisulphite which, without the help of the gelatine, would normally have degraded ferric oxide to the compound ferrous oxide.

The experiments, said Science et Vie, answer several claims made by the pro-Shroud camp, which says the marks could not have been painted onto the cloth.

In a related story, Florida Governor Jeb Bush dismissed the scientific evidence as irrelevant and announced that he intended to open an investigation into whether Michael Schiavo was responsible for planting the fake shroud in a French church in the year 1357.

Judith Fucking Miller

AlterNet: MediaCulture: The Sins of Judith Miller

In the hierarchy of slime that ranks politicans, televangelists and creators of reality TV, quite possibly the lowest rung is occupied by apparatchik reporters: those who wear the rainments of truthseeker and enemy of darkness, yet obfuscate, shade and flat-out whopperize on behalf of pure evil. Robert Novak has epitomized this ilk for decades; but he is far too well-known as a partisan hack to have much effect any more. And so Judith Fucking Miller has become the poster child for journalistic evil -- in a real sense, we can blame her for the Iraq quagmire. She didn't start it, but she is still arguably what lawyers call "but for" causation: If the New York Times had not beat its war drums so loudly, if it had called bullshit on the whole leaking-of-lies charade starting almost three years ago, we might not be there now. The Administration trumpeted the reporting of the "liberal" Times in support of its Kafkaesque war story; in my view, there are gallons of blood on her hands.

Having shilled the loss of 1700 American and perhaps fifty times than many Iraqi lives, not to mention a few hundred billion dollars transferred to the likes of Halliburton, Ms. Fucking Miller's work on that cause was done. How else could she be of service to the dark lords?

Russ Baker @ Alternet:

Despite having essentially admitted in a written apology, long ex post facto, that its reporter helped to promote a fallacious rationale for an unnecessary invasion and catastrophically protracted occupation, the Times has not put Miller out to pasture. Instead, it has moved her at her request to another challenge: covering scandal wherever it might rear its head within the United Nations.

This is an ironic assignment, since it was the success of the UN's peaceful approach to controlling WMD in Iraq that underlined the wrongheadedness of the pro-invasion clique that supplied Miller with her faulty "scoops."

Over the past year, she has produced a plethora of stories, chock full of innuendo and allegation but short of independent journalistic verification, suggesting that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is a bad man and perhaps a corrupt one, and that, by extension, the UN is hardly worth respecting and funding, much less including in geopolitical decision-making.

Most of Miller's sleuthing centers on contracts handed out in connection with the so-called Oil for Food program (which got indispensable staples to the Iraqi people during the embargo). Miller's articles typically take murky evidence and create in readers' minds the sense that there's something deeply wrong in the UN's command structure, when in fact, there may not be. At worst, the malfeasance there pales by comparison to what goes on in Washington day after day.

Since March, Miller has been largely invisible, but last week she returned to the UN dirt beat with a vengeance. On June 15, she came up with goods that at first looked damning. Her article, "Investigators To Review Hint of Annan Role in Iraq Oil Sales," dealt with a memo that seemed to indicate that Secretary General Kofi Annan may have had more contact with a UN contractor for whom his son worked than he had previously admitted. Miller makes it clear that the company in question, Cotecna, has been belatedly forthcoming with information about how it got the UN contracts. But in the penultimate paragraph, she drops this little bomb: "A new internal audit showed that Cotecna had not made the $306,305 in payments that [a UN investigative] panel said might have gone to Kojo Annan [Kofi Annan's son]."

Nothing remotely ironic there to me -- the UN was right on Iraq, and Judy in Disguise was wrong. By the twisted logic of King George, the UN had to be punished for this transgression. And so it sent uber-hack Ms. Fucking Miller to do that voodoo what she do.

And what do you know, her trademark -- the "reliably" sourced whopper that is eventually exposed as, well, a complete, whole-cloth fabrication, and an awkward, ineffectual disavowal by her employer -- is again the result.

Worst. Reporter. Ever.

Faux News: Rehnquist's Legacy: A Balanced Court

FOXNews.com - Politics - Rehnquist's Legacy: A Balanced Court

I try to avoid wandering into Wingnuttia, but everyonce in a while a stray URL leads me into one of the other Internets and the signposts make clear that I have entered the Twilight Zone.

I just stumbled onto Fox News' site for only a few seconds, but I am still reeling. Here are the second and third 'graphs in their Rehnquist puffery:

Rehnquist's reputation as a fair-minded jurist earned him widespread, bipartisan admiration throughout his tenure. However, he has frustrated many on the right who had hoped he would side with more socially conservative positions.

The 80-year-old chief justice of the United States, born in Wisconsin, active in the Republican Party during his years as an attorney in Arizona and highly regarded as a former assistant attorney general for President Nixon, appears to be nearing his professional twilight.

Yeah, that's the ticket -- Rehnquist is a centrist who disappoints conservatives.

Read John Dean's book "The Rehnquist Choice" and tell me again how well regarded he was as an AAG. Read about how his Republican "activites" in Arizona included preventing minorities from voting. Read about how this "fair-minded" jurist argued in favor of "separate but equal" and against ending segregation.

A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of minds of rancid tapioca.

Massive Crack Opens In Earth In Texas

A massive crack in the earth opened up last week in Claude, Texas and its creating a stir among geologists.

Geologists said Tuesday the crack was a joint in the earth's crust. They believe the opening is the result of a weak point in the joint where one spot slips away from the other.

Some parts measure more than 30-feet deep and it drained what use to be a pond. Experts say earth cracks are common but the size of the crack in Claude is not.

Too late. Dubya moved to Washington years ago.

What Tax Cuts Cost

Funding for job training, rural health care, low-income schools and help for people lacking health insurance would face big cuts under a bill passed Friday by the House.

The measure, which passed 250-151, contains $142.5 billion in spending under Congress' control for labor, health and education programs. That's essentially a freeze at current levels.

But new demands, including $870 million to administer the new Medicare prescription drug program, have forced cuts in scores of programs.

The cuts include the outright elimination of 48 programs whose current budgets total $1 billion. Among the programs to be eliminated is the Healthy Communities Access Program, currently funded at $83 million, which helps communities offer health care to the uninsured.

Also eliminated is the $205 million budget for an Education Department grant program targeted at low-income and underachieving schools.

Trickle-down economics at work.

Extraordinary

ROME (AP) -- An Italian judge on Friday ordered the arrests of 13 CIA officers for secretly transporting a Muslim preacher from Italy to Egypt as part of U.S. anti-terrorism efforts - a rare public objection to the practice by a close American ally.

The Egyptian was spirited away in 2003, purportedly as part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program in which terror suspects are transferred to third countries without court approval, subjecting them to possible torture.

The arrest warrants were announced Friday by the Milan prosecutor's office, which has called the disappearance a kidnapping and a blow to a terrorism investigation in Italy. The office said the imam was believed to belong to an Islamic terrorist group.

I've been wondering when one of our tenuous "allies" would pipe up about the way we treat their countries as playgrounds for our black bag jobs. I imagine trying to whack Giuliana Sgrena didn't help endear our boys to the Italian authorities any.

What we euphamistically call "extraordinary rendition" has a bunch of less sterile names when other people do it. Kidnapping, for instance. Violation of soverignty, when done in other countries. Unconstitutional, when done here. An act of war, if anyone had the reach to do it to any of our top war criminals.

The Potsdam of Oil

The London Line : Iraq: The carve-up begins

We knew this was always what it was really about: divying up the oil. Like we did with Russia and England at Potsdam the tail end of WWII, we are carving up Iraq's booty.

The Iraq war has so far cost America and Britain £105billion. But the financial clawback is gathering pace as British and American oil giants work out how to get their hands on the estimated £3trillion worth of oil.

Executives from BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old firm, are expected to congregate at the Paddington Hilton for a two-day chinwag with top-level officials from Iraq's oil ministry. The gathering, sponsored by the British Government, is being described as the "premier event" for those with designs on Iraqi oil, and will go ahead despite opposition from Iraqi oil workers, who fear their livelihoods are being flogged to foreigners.

Let freedom reign.

Big Chief Triangle

Dr. Bloor has admonished me for my failure to comment on the return of Phil Jackson to the Lakers. I would ignore his entreaty, but he threatened to blog about golf, so here goes.

Until Kobe turned the team for the ages into his own personal junkyard, I had been a Laker fan for almost 20 years, through the good times and the slightly less good times. The he drove off four Hall of Famers. I don't live in Big Brown anymore, and I ran out of reasons to give a damn.

I noticed that Jackson had decided to come back (which I attribute more to his relatiohship with Lakers owner Jerry Buss' daughter than to a desire to hook up with his least favorite man-child), but at this point my Kobe vitriol has run its course. Talking about the goings on with the Lakes is kinda like talking about the travails of the (Utah) Jazz -- I feel no allegiance to either place, and both teams have absurd carryover names that fit the current locations like Kobe fits the triangle. I read the news of the Lakers like I read the news of Tom Cruise's pedophilia -- quickly, with my usual disdain for rubbernecking, and in the hope that I can avoid retaining what I have seen.

You... you... Frenchman!

Digby has an inspired way to bait the Republicans who go ballistic everytime someone on the left so much as whispers a nazi reference, no matter how tempered, and no matter how egregious the the thing americans are doing:

Compare our follies with those of the French.

It seems to me that the Pentagon planners who held that screening of "The Battle of Algiers" were, perhaps, trying to get that message across, at least if one were to take the movie at face value. Its central premise is that it was French tactics (like torture) that fueled the FLN rather than defeated it in the long run. But, as the Slate article points out, it also shows (incorrectly) that torture works in the short run --- and that may have been the lesson that was taken to heart.

But regardless of whether the Pentagon actually studied and approved of French tactics in Algeria, or if anyone took those screenings seriously, it's pretty clear that we're on the same path. (And don't be too sure they didn't. Apparently, half of Washington was devouring "The Arab Mind" a completely discredited piece of sociological crap, so it wouldn't be surprising. These Republican Intellecutals, after all, tend to believe what they want to believe.)

And, since Nazis, Soviets and Commies of all stripes are off limits when describing our failing and immoral tactics, I think we should just fall back on every Republican's favorite whipping boy -- the cheese eating surrender monkeys.

I can't wait to hear Orrin Hatch stand up in the Senate, bursting with wounded national pride as he reflexively clutches his antique pearl choker, and dolefully expresses his outrage that the Democrats would ever say that Americans are like the French. I have no doubt that the high priests of right wing radio would start speaking in tongues and the FOX News analysts would go into full-on head spinning, green vomit, Linda Blair mode.

And maybe, just maybe, the absurdity of it all will finally hit home with the Democratic establishment, the press and the American people. After all, in the "who's the traitor" game, the Democrats are supposed to love the French, who hate America just like they do only...now they hate the French? Whose side are we on again?

I like it.

The Real News in the Downing Street Memos

The British reporter who brought us the DSM explains why we are all missing the point:

American media coverage of the Downing Street memo has largely focused on the assertion by Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British foreign intelligence, that war was seen as inevitable in Washington, where "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It quotes British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that "the U.S. had already begun 'spikes of activity' to put pressure on the regime." This we now realize was Plan B.

Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the conflict.

British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that although virtually none were used in March and April, an average of 10 tons a month were dropped between May and August.

But these initial "spikes of activity" didn't have the desired effect. The Iraqis didn't retaliate. They didn't provide the excuse Bush and Blair needed. So at the end of August, the allies dramatically intensified the bombing into what was effectively the initial air war.

The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied aircraft shot up to 54.6 tons in September alone, with the increased rates continuing into 2003.

In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress approved military action against Iraq.

The way in which the intelligence was "fixed" to justify war is old news.

The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress.

Important, criminal doings. Impeachable offenses all. But if the press and populace don't care about being lied to, they aren't going to pay any attention to a little thing like an undeclared illegal war, either.

Social Security: Republicans doing St. Vitus Dance

It is serious stuff, of course, but the latest from Team Snafu is pretty goddamned funny. Let's review the history of the 2005 assault on Social Security, which has stopped looking like a Mac Sennett film and started to look like St. Vitus' dance:

1. The Sky is Falling -- the aerial bombardment that preceded the ground assault was the insistance that Social Security was in Big Trouble -- the first goal was to try to convince us that the program was in such danger that something simply had to be done to save it. An essential part of that doomsday scenario was the assertion that the trust fund -- the roughly $1.5 trillion we have been prepaying against the coming rainy day -- was a myth.

2. Only Privatization Will Save Us -- despite the failure of the opening gambit to convince most folks of the problem, Maximum Leader then rolled out his panacea, insisting that only privatization would save us from a "flat bust, bankrupt" Social Security system.

3. Privatization is at least Part of the Solution -- in the face of consensus that privatization would in fact make the problem worse, the Bush shills retreated to claiming that private accounts could at least be "an important part of any solution," walking quickly past the obvious fact privatization is so fiscally poisonous that that any plan that included private accounts could be made more effective by excluding them.

And, finally, when even Congressional Repugs would have nothing of it:

4. Screw Solvency, Gimme Privatization NOW! -- The latest Ponzification to come out of Republican Fredonia turns all that has come before on its head. Solvency of Social Security is no longer within a country mile of the discussion. And the mythical, don't-count-on-it trust fund? Now it is the funding source for the private accounts.

Dean Baker, co-director for the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, said Republicans were essentially arguing that private accounts were the only way to force them to stop spending Social Security money. "If I were a Republican, I'm not sure I'd want to make that argument," Baker said.

McCrery also conceded that contributions to the accounts would end in 2017 unless a special board he envisions devised a way to continue funding them.

Jason Furman, a private account foe at the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said contributions would dwindle to just $40 in the last year before the surplus ends. He also said the cost of administering the accounts would overwhelm any benefit.

So, to review:

1. We are faced with dire problem X;
2. I offer solution Y.
3.OK, so problem X won't actually be solved by Y, but we can do Y and still solve X.
4. OK, OK, OK. Forget about solving X, let's just do Y for the hell of it.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Eejitous

via Reuters: CIA says Iraq is now a terrorist training ground

The CIA believes the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, officials said on Wednesday.

A classified report from the U.S. spy agency says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to coordinated conventional attacks on police and military targets, officials said.

Once the insurgency ends, Islamic militants are likely to disperse as highly organized battle-hardened combatants capable of operating throughout the Arab-speaking world and in other regions including Europe.

Fighters leaving Iraq would primarily pose a challenge for their countries of origin including Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

But the May report, which has been widely circulated in the intelligence community, also cites a potential threat to the United States.

I wonder who will get the key assignment of rewriting the report to conform to the Administration's "last throes" rhetoric?

AP: Tribe Told to Reroute DeLay Checks

A casino-rich tribe wrote checks for at least $55,000 to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's political groups, but the donations were never publicly disclosed and the tribe was directed to divert the money to other groups that helped Republicans, tribal documents show.

Lobbyist Jack Abramoff, now under criminal investigation, told the Coushatta Indian tribe, a client, to cancel its checks to the DeLay groups in 2001 and 2002 and route the money to more obscure groups that helped Republicans on Medicare prescription drug legislation and Christian voter outreach.

DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority and Americans for a Republican Majority never reported receiving any checks from the Louisiana tribe to federal or state regulators, their reports show. The donations, however, are recorded in memos and ledgers kept by the tribe.

"Enclosed please find a check for $10,000 to the Texans for a Republican Majority. This check needs to be reissued to America 21," Abramoff wrote the Coushattas in a May 2002 letter obtained by The Associated Press.

America 21 is a Nashville, Tenn.-based Christian group focused on voter turnout that helped Republican candidates in the pivotal 2002 elections that kept DeLay's party in control of the House.

Several months earlier, the tribe was asked to cancel a $25,000 check to Americans for a Republican Majority and to send that money instead in August 2001 to a group called Sixty Plus that helped Republicans in their two-year effort to get a Medicare prescription drug benefit through Congress.

Nice to see the Bugman back in the news. And I would normally be upset about how other news seems to be generally crowding out coverage of his travails, but I'll take DSM coverage any day.

Jesus' General & Op Yellow Elephant

The General usually hits his target, but doesn't always go after big game. This time I think he has the perfect target in his sights -- shaming Young Republicans into enlisting in the military.

Great artwork, great cause.

Animal Rights Extremism a Priority for FBI

Because you never know when you might run out of missing white women.

Wasteland

from The Huffington Post:

Which brings me back to this weekend. If you were to get your news only from television, you’d think the top issue facing our country right now is an 18-year-old girl named Natalee who went missing in Aruba. Every time one of these stories comes up, like, say, Michael Jackson, when it’s finally over I think, what a relief, now we can get back to real news. But we never do. When one of these big league nonstories ends, they just call up a new one from the minors... and off they go with another round of breathless reporting. Anything to not have to actually report actual news.

Here are the number of news segments that mention these stories: (from a search of the main news networks’ transcripts from May 1-June 20).

ABC News: "Downing Street Memo": 0 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 42 segments; "Michael Jackson": 121 segments.

CBS News: "Downing Street Memo": 0 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 70 segments; "Michael Jackson": 235 segments.

NBC News: "Downing Street Memo": 6 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 62 segments; "Michael Jackson": 109 segments.

CNN: "Downing Street Memo": 30 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 294 segments; "Michael Jackson": 633 segments.

Fox News: "Downing Street Memo": 10 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 148 segments; Michael Jackson": 286 segments.

MSNBC: "Downing Street Memo": 10 segments; "Natalee Holloway": 30 segments; "Michael Jackson": 106 segments.

How can network "news" executives sleep in the face of such absurdity -- absurdity of their making? We need to hammer these statistics and keep them front and center until these court jesters answer for their dereliction.

Can't imagine why I didn't see this one on Fox...

JTW News - 82 Iraqi MPs Demand Occupation Pullout

Eighty two Iraqi lawmakers from across the political spectrum have pressed for the withdrawal of the US-led occupation troops from their country.

The Shiite, Kurdish, Sunni Arab, Christian and communist legislators made the call in a letter sent by Falah Hassan Shanshal of the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), the largest bloc in parliament, to speaker Hajem Al-Hassani, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“We have asked in several sessions for occupation troops to withdraw. Our request was ignored,” read the latter, made public on Sunday, June 19.

Somehow I have trouble envisioning this particular manifestation of flowering Iraqi democracy getting much traction in Washington about now.

And if they really want to get the American troops out of Iraq, they should hide a missing white woman in Iran.

The White House's White-Out Problem

Think Progress has a long, well-documented list of egregious rewritings of scientific reports. Sad, but important. If only ours was so Tinkerbell a world that only those who believed Bush's lies had to suffer for them.

Soldier Sues Over Guantanamo Beating

from the LA Times:

A U.S. military policeman who was beaten by fellow MPs during a botched training drill at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison for detainees has sued the Pentagon for $15 million, alleging that the incident violated his constitutional rights.

Spc. Sean D. Baker, 38, was assaulted in January 2003 after he volunteered to wear an orange jumpsuit and portray an uncooperative detainee. Baker said the MPs, who were told that he was an unruly detainee who had assaulted an American sergeant, inflicted a beating that resulted in a traumatic brain injury.

Baker, a Gulf War veteran who reenlisted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, was medically retired in April 2004. He said the assault left him with seizures, blackouts, headaches, insomnia and psychological problems."

What happened to this GI shouldn't happen to a dog -- which is precisely the point those of us in the "blame America first" crowd have been howling about for about two years now. For those of us who oppose things like torture and the death penalty, there are no difficult fact patterns. But if you think it is OK to snuff or beat the snot out of some people but not others, sooner or later you end up here. I don't know what the Republican goon squad will have to say about this one -- anything they say will set off cognitive dissonance louder than Big Ben.

Vote-Rigging Feared in Iran Election

Vote-Rigging Feared in Iran Election - Yahoo! News

TEHRAN, Iran - The front-runner in Iran's presidential runoff sought to rally moderates Sunday by warning that his hard-line opponent would run a totalitarian regime. The statement from the campaign manager for Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani came amid suspicions the powerful Revolutionary Guard would rig the runoff vote for conservatives.

Rafsanjani's campaign manager, Mohammed Baghir Nowbakht, said Friday's runoff was crucial because hard-liners would not tolerate differences of opinions if elected and would run a "totalitarian" regime.

"They would never let other groups participate in the government," he said.

Deja vu' -- that strange feeling that one is seeing something that has happened before...

Deja vu' -- that strange feeling that one is seeing something that has happened before...

Meanwhile, in the other America...

Big "thanks" to Bush from middle east

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's spy chief used just two words to respond to White House ridicule of last week's presidential election: "Thank you." His sarcasm was barely hidden. The backfire on Washington was more evident.

The sharp barbs from President Bush were widely seen in Iran as damaging to pro-reform groups because the comments appeared to have boosted turnout among hard-liners in Friday's election — with the result being that an ultraconservative now is in a two-way showdown for the presidency.

"I say to Bush: `Thank you,'" quipped Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi. "He motivated people to vote in retaliation."

I'll bet he gets fan mail from Karimov in Uzbekistan, too.

This week in Condiliar

from Think Progress:

This morning on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked if “the Bush administration fairly [can] be criticized for failing to level with the American people about how long and difficult this commitment will be?” Rice responded:

[T]he administration, I think, has said to the American people that it is a generational commitment to Iraq.

Does she even know when she is lying anymore? Does she care?

A weekly series may not be enough to keep up.

Spanking the lapdog

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | New US move to spoil climate accord

Extraordinary efforts by the White House to scupper Britain's attempts to tackle global warming have been revealed in leaked US government documents obtained by The Observer.
These papers - part of the Bush administration's submission to the G8 action plan for Gleneagles next month - show how the United States, over the past two months, has been secretly undermining Tony Blair's proposals to tackle climate change.

The documents obtained by The Observer represent an attempt by the Bush administration to undermine completely the science of climate change and show that the US position has hardened during the G8 negotiations. They also reveal that the White House has withdrawn from a crucial United Nations commitment to stabilise greenhouse gas emissions.

Part of the quid pro quo by which a godfather manages his troops is loyalty. So it is mystifying to me how Bush expects to keep his British lapdog loyal to him when Bush keeps buggering Blair at every opportunity. Maybe Blair himself is the source of all the docs that have been coming out in the UK papers...

U.S. Pressure Weakens G-8 Climate Plan

Bush administration officials working behind the scenes have succeeded in weakening key sections of a proposal for joint action by the eight major industrialized nations to curb climate change.

Under U.S. pressure, negotiators in the past month have agreed to delete language that would detail how rising temperatures are affecting the globe, set ambitious targets to cut carbon dioxide emissions and set stricter environmental standards for World Bank-funded power projects, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Negotiators met this week in London to work out details of the document, which is slated to be adopted next month at the Group of Eight's annual meeting in Scotland.

The administration's push to alter the G-8's plan on global warming marks its latest effort to edit scientific or policy documents to accord with its position that mandatory carbon dioxide cuts are unnecessary. Under mounting international pressure to adopt stricter controls on heat-trapping gas emissions, Bush officials have consistently sought to modify U.S. government and international reports that would endorse a more aggressive approach to mitigating global warming.

I am far beyond being amazed at how far our Preznit and his cronies will go in trying to exterminate truth. But I can still be amazed at the folks who prove susceptible to their pressure.

Stupidity in a can

Sure. I had a 'Sclade, with dubs. But I still sometimes felt, you know.. inadequate.

So then I traded in on a Hummer. Getting 8 miles per gallon while driving solo in an 8,000-pound vehicle makes my package swell, but sometimes I still feel kinda small. See, I get kinda carsick if the road isn't smooth, and all the really butch guys go off-road with their rides. My package shrank every time I rolled up to the corner Starbucks in my virgin ride and saw the streaks and clods of of real environmental destruction all over the big boys' rides.

Well, my manhood has been revived by one crafty Brit, who is selling the answer to my prayers: Spray-on Mud:

For owners who don't want it to look like they're driving an unnecessary gas-guzzler, a little splash signals that the vehicle spends time tackling the back country.

The product is the brainchild of Colin Dowse, a businessman from Shropshire, England, a village close to the Welsh border.

"Spray-On Mud is an urban camouflage designed to give the impression that you are a serious off-roader,'' he said.

Dowse, a Web designer, came up with the idea about a year ago while sharing a few pints with friends at a local pub.

It's genuine local dirt -- strained to remove stones and other debris -- mixed with water and a secret ingredient that Dowse says helps it stick to a vehicle's bodywork.

...Dowse said he can barely keep up with Internet sales of the product at $14.50 a quart.

Couldn't make it up if I tried...

U.S. Newswire : Releases : "DeLay: The Case for U.N. Reform..."

House majority leader Tom DeLay:

"The pervasive corruption at the U.N. is not a problem -- it is a crisis. No one denies this, and in response to the overwhelming evidence, the Democrat substitute says the reforms in the underlying bill should happen. But, Mr. Speaker, it is not enough to say these reforms should happen -- they must happen, and they must happen right now.

"We shouldn't be asking the U.N.'s leaders to make these reforms -- we need to tell them. The American people are today underwriting rampant corruption -- 22 percent of it, to be precise -- and it needs to stop."

Next: Dick Cheney complains about lack of transparency in U.N. governance.

Same as it ever was...same as it ever was.. same..

from the Los Angeles Times:

The Bush administration altered critical portions of a scientific analysis of the environmental impact of cattle grazing on public lands before announcing Thursday that it would relax regulations limiting grazing on those lands, according to scientists involved in the study.

A government biologist and a hydrologist, who both retired this year from the Bureau of Land Management, said their conclusions that the proposed new rules might adversely affect water quality and wildlife, including endangered species, were excised and replaced with language justifying less stringent regulations favored by cattle ranchers.

Grazing regulations, which affect 160 million acres of public land in the Western U.S., set the conditions under which ranchers may use that land, and guide government managers in determining how many cattle may graze, where and for how long without harming natural resources.

The original draft of the environmental analysis warned that the new rules would have a "significant adverse impact" on wildlife, but that phrase was removed. The bureau now concludes that the grazing regulations are "beneficial to animals."

Eliminated from the final draft was another conclusion that read: "The Proposed Action will have a slow, long-term adverse impact on wildlife and biological diversity in general."

Also removed was language saying how a number of the rule changes could adversely affect endangered species.

"This is a whitewash. They took all of our science and reversed it 180 degrees," said Erick Campbell, a former BLM state biologist in Nevada and a 30-year bureau employee who retired this year. He was the author of sections of the report pertaining to the effect on wildlife and threatened and endangered species.

"They rewrote everything," Campbell said in an interview this week. "It's a crime."

Look! Over there! Isn't that Michael Jackson with a missing white woman?

Kaye Grogan alert

Since the Poorman's blog seems to be on the fritz... check out her special brand of triple-distilled stoopidity.

A sample of her latest insight:

Yes, I'm talking about the God this nation was founded on! I bet you folks thought our government was just being accommodating, and perhaps they were at the time, when they foolishly agreed to tell all foreigners "to come on over!" Maybe it's time to go back and do a little research on who came up with the rilliant . . . but not so brilliant long term decision, to allow people of other cultures to come over and challenge the American traditional values.

I'll leave the mocking to the master.

Another angle on DSM

The focus has been on the rush to war in Iraq -- a topic that has been ignored far too long. It is fine with me if it stays there for a good long time.

But there is another angle here -- one that ought to put another nail in SHrub's coffin when the time comes. As with so much of this sordid mess, it has been hidden in plain sight for some time.

Sayeth once and perhaps future good guy Bob Woodward, from a 2004 60 Minutes about Woodward's hagiography, "Plan of Attack:" :

“Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."

Think about that for a second. Now that everyone finally seems to understand that Iraq was a cock-up from day one; now that Osama has been footloose for almost four years post-9/11; now that a handful of folks in Congress are starting to learn to pronounce that unfamiliar word "Con-sti-tu-tion" -- an in-your-face, explicit statement that Boy Blunder secretly diverted Congressionally earmarked funds from the pursuit of Bin Laden to his family vendetta.

That there's an impeachable offense, people.

Putting two and two-faced together

Did HRC's Birch out GOP congressman? - GAGV News - The Empty Closet

Elizabeth Birch of the Human Rights campaign (HRC) has been accused of outing a member of Congress by telling the story of an anti-gay congressman who, eight years ago, privately asked her how people know if they are gay, and stated that he had “loved men”.

At a Gay Pride Forum in Washington, D.C. on June 3, Birch was commenting on reaching out to foes of gay rights. She said that in 1995 she and HRC then-Political Director Daniel Zingale had met with an unnamed conservative Republican congressman, who had been “derisive and demeaning” in his attacks on gay rights legislation.

Birch said that the politician held her and Zingale back after the meeting, and when his staff had left, he asked them, “So how do you know?… You know, how do you know if you’re that way?”
...
Birch said that the meeting took place shortly after the congressman had created a controversy in 1995 when he referred to gays as “homos” on the floor of the House of Representatives. The Washington Blade says that media reports and background facts indicate that the congressman was Randall (“Duke”) Cunningham, “an arch-conservative from San Diego”. Cunningham was apparently the only member of the House who called gays “homos” on the House
floor at the time.

Two gay Democratic activists in San Diego confirmed the first week in July that Birch told members of that city’s Democratic Club a nearly identical story in 1996, at that time directly identifying Cunningham. Harmony Allen, Cunningham’s press secretary, stated that Cunningham never met with Birch and never made any comments about loving men. She said the Democratic activists lack credibility and are motivated by political gain.

Cunningham has always been considered one of the most virulently anti-gay members of Congress. HRC gives him 17 points out of a possible 100 in their current congressional scorecard.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass), who has been on the receiving end of Cunningham’s homophobia, said, “He tends to blurt out stuff on gay issues. He seems to be more interested in discussing homosexuality than most homosexuals.”

So it seems that perhaps David Dreier is not the only self-loathing closeted gay Congressman from Southern California.

What makes this double-good fun is that Cunninghams' chestnuts are being roasted on an open fire for reasons totally unrelated to his apparent sexual hypocrisy. Josh Marshall has been all over the sale of Cunningham's house (at roughly 2X market) to a defense contractor who just happened to score a large deal afterwards, and who also owns the yacht Cunningham has been living on when in Washington. Homophobic AND gay AND corrupt? Priceless.

And the best part about outing a virulent homophobe is that it will reinforce the "gay bashers are actually self-loathing queers" meme, which if nothing else should shame a bunch of them into shutting the hell up.

Peace with honor and Social Security

With the Senate Finance Committee at an impasse on Social Security and House leaders anxious about moving forward, Republican congressional leaders have told the White House in recent days that it is time to look for an escape route.

Senate GOP leaders, in discussions with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and political officials, have made it clear they are stuck in a deep rut and suggested it is time for an exit strategy, according to a senior Senate Republican official and Finance Committee aides.

Seems exit strategies are in rather short supply about now.

US using napalm in Iraq

American officials lied to British ministers over the use of "internationally reviled" napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.
...
Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary
weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.

But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."

Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military targets "away from civilian targets", he said.This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets.

You remember napalm, right?



Excellent approach to minimizing the attention paid to Amnesty's "gulag" epithet, I'd say. So let's all go back to Vietnam parallels for a few weeks, shall we?

Like, um, fragging.

Then maybe we can talk about end game a bit...

CNN.com covers Conyers

CNN.com - Democratic forum focuses on 'Downing Street memo' - Jun 16, 2005

I am listening to a bit here and there. If this actually gets real network airplay, I am willing to dare to dream that we may finally be at the tipping point. Letting the Republicans include themselves out of these hearings could turn out to be a masterstroke.

Schiavo post mortem

Schiavo autopsy shows irreversible brain damage - U.S. News - MSNBC.com

The medical examiner’s conclusions countered a videotape released by the Schindlers of Terri Schiavo in her hospice bed. The video showed Schiavo appearing to turn toward her mother’s voice and smile, moaning and laughing. Her head moved up and down and she seemed to follow the progress of a brightly colored Mickey Mouse balloon.

They believed her condition could improve with therapy.

However, doctors said her reactions were automatic responses and not evidence of thought or consciousness, and Thogmartin’s report went farther.

“The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain,” he said. “This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons.”

Well, now I see why this story got so much coverage -- it was about a Missing White Woman's brain -- half of it, anyway.

The Democratic Congress

Rep John Conyers (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee who was told by House Republicans that he would be refused rooms for Democratic hearings, has found a space in the Capitol for his fourm Thursday on the Downing Street documents, RAW STORY has learned.

The hearing will be broadcast live on C-SPAN 3 Thursday.

Conyers and other Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee were recently told the Republican majority staff had instituted a new policy to deny any request from a Democrat to use a committee hearing room.

GOP Judiciary spokesman Jeff Lungren told The Hill Tuesday Republicans were upset Congressmembers were addressing Conyers as “Mr. Chairman.”

“They were unwilling or unable to make those changes,” Lungren added. “At this point, if they want to hold these forums, they’ll have to find some other place to do it.”

Personally I think this is brilliant. The Republican Congressional leadership is stonewalling, and refusing to exercise its constitutional responsibilities. They have gone so far as to try to block the ability of the Democrats to do anything at all.

Now, finally, the Dems are fighting fire with fire -- holding "unofficial" hearings in unofficial locations. The Republican Congress has intentionally created a vacuum, and the Democratic COngress is finally filling it. If the press covers them, this is a win-win for both truth and the Democrats. Making a bigger stink only raises the visibility of the unofficial hearings, and highlight the obvious question about why the unofficial hearings were necessary in the first place.

You go.

Major papers ignored DSM because radio receivers in their brains were silent on subject

Salon.com reports:

As newspaper editors look back and examine why the controversial Downing Street memo, first published by the Times of London on May 1, received so little coverage in their papers, several of them are pointing to the same culprit: the Associated Press. Editors rely on the worldwide wire service to let them know what's worthy of attention, and that's particularly true for international events. In the case of the Downing Street memo out of London, they say the AP simply failed to cover the story.

Jim Cox, USA Today's senior assignment editor for foreign news, tells Salon that when the story first broke last month, "we looked to wires for guidance" but for days didn't see anything. It was a month before the paper reported on the memo; Cox takes the blame for that omission.

On Sunday, the ombudsman at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune addressed readers' complaints about the paper's lack of Downing memo coverage. According to that account, the paper's nation/world editor, Dennis McGrath, was aware of the memo story when it broke in May, and he and his deputies "began watching for a wire story. A week later, they were still watching. 'We were frustrated the wires weren't providing stories on this,' McGrath said." The paper eventually assigned the story to a local reporter.

We've all been asking this question for weeks. The answer makes me wish I'd never asked.

No wonder it has been so easy for the White House to hijack the mainstream media -- the pilot's seat is otherwise unoccupied. There is isn't a blessed soul anywhere inside the Fourth Estate who has any clue how to make a decision about what is newsworthy, so they are all just so damned relieved when someone tells them what is news.

Wankers.

The Duke Cunningham real estate deal

Josh Marshall @ TPM is on his game pursuing the IOKBHAR (It's OK Because He's A Rebublican) deal by which a California congressman piucked up perhaps a half-million dollar windfall from a defense contractor. (Go here to read the basic plot.)

His latest posting points out that the fig leaf that made the whole deal pass the principal's obviously too-lenient sniff test was the "appraisal" of Cunningham's home performed by the selling broker. (To be fair, Cunningham didn't call it an appraisal -- he called it "comparables from an independent source establishing the value of the home.")

Personally, I wouldn't lay out that much long green for a house without a formal appraisal. In fact, like most mere mortals, I couldn't, because my mortgage lender would insist on a formal appraisal, by a licensed appraiser. They would laugh in my face if I aske them to trust the selling broker's opinion.

Brokers give comps all the time. But there is a fundamental conflict between the professional obligations of an appraiser and a broker. Brokers are almost always compensated as a percentage of the sales price; "(a)n ethical appraiser never works "on commission" and never charges according to the value of the property."

So Cunningham and Elizabeth Todd, his broker, would seem to be caught in what chess players call a fork: if the valuation was an "appraisal," it was improperly obtained and delivered; if it wasn't an appraisal, it provides little or no justification for the price.

And as an interesting aside, Googling "Elizabeth Todd," San Diego and "real estate" yields this story, but no other references to Ms. Todd's real estate business. It does, however, reveal an "Elizabeth Todd Designs" on the Carlsbad Chamber of Commerce site, for "Clothing - Women's & Accessories." Is Ms. Todd a full-time real estate person? It would be intresting to know more about Ms. Todd's business and qualifications.

Pot assures the kettle of its whiteness

DeLay defends Cunningham's home sale

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) yesterday defended Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-Calif.) after calls from congressional Democrats to investigate the Republican appropriator for selling his San Diego home to a defense contractor whose firm had received $65 million in federal funds in 2004.

“Duke Cunningham is a hero,” DeLay said during a press briefing Tuesday. “He is an honorable man of high integrity.”
...
Cunningham sold his home in 2003 to Mitchell Wade, president of MZM Inc., a Nevada-based defense contractor that specializes in security and intelligence-gathering technology. The company lost $700,000 after it resold the property eight months later, the San Diego Union-Tribune first reported Sunday.

At the briefing, DeLay also defended Democratic Rep. John Murtha (Pa.), who was the subject of a Los Angeles Times article questioning the lobbying activities of Murtha’s brother in connection with passage of last year’s $417 billion defense spending bill.

The article said Murtha’s brother, Robert “Kit” Murtha, is a senior partner at a Washington lobbying firm that represented 10 companies that received a combined $20.8 million in contracts from the defense bill.

“I know that John Murtha is an honorable man,” DeLay said during the briefing, adding that he did not know any details of the article. “He is a man of great integrity.”

Albert Einstein offered more than one great equation in his lifetime. In addition to e =mc², he said that "If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."

Congressman Bugman: What with all the lobbyist-paid golf junkets, you seem to have "y" down. And perhaps there was lots of "x" behind your rise to the top of the Republican dung heap. But when it comes to passing judgement on the ethical difficulties of other Congressmen, you might want to consider the words of that famous egghead Jew, and take a heapin' dose of "z."

His church was bombed, and now he protests funerals of the war dead

Pastor Fred Phelps, that wingnut's wingnut, is doing his level best to find a place so absurd that even the Goddest Squader will admit is blasphemous.

A Kansas preacher and gay rights foe whose congregation is protesting military funerals around the country said he's coming to Idaho tomorrow to picket the memorial for an Idaho National Guard soldier killed in Iraq.

A flier on the Web site of Pastor Fred Phelps' Westboro Baptist Church claims God killed Cpl. Carrie French with an improvised explosive device in retaliation against the United States for a bombing at Phelps' church six years ago.
...
Westboro Baptist either has protested or is planning protests of other public funerals of soldiers from Michigan, Alabama, Minnesota, Virginia and Colorado. A protest is planned for July 11 at Dover Air Force Base, the military base where war dead are transported before being sent on to their home states.

Phelps gained national notoriety in 1998 when he picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard, the gay college student beaten to death in Wyoming.
...
"Our attitude toward what's happening with the war is the Lord is punishing this evil nation for abandoning all moral imperatives that are worth a dime," Phelps said.

So tell me, Mr. Roberts, Mr. Falwell -- is this really why God hates America?

If the revolving door spun any faster...

It would generate enough lift to fly a helicopter.

from The Associated Press:

A former White House official and one-time oil industry lobbyist whose editing of government reports on climate change prompted criticism from environmentalists will join Exxon Mobil Corp., the oil company said Tuesday.

The White House announced over the weekend that Philip Cooney, chief of staff of its Council on Environmental Quality, had resigned, calling it a long-planned departure. He had been head of the climate program at the American Petroleum Institute, the trade group for large oil companies.

Cooney will join Exxon Mobile in the fall, company spokesman Russ Roberts told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from its Dallas headquarters. He declined to described Cooney's job.

The one good thing about the current political climate in Washington is that corruption is so pervasive and unremarkable that what was once done in the dead of night is now done in broad daylight.

Mark Felt headed Deep Throat investigation

from The Nation: How Deep Throat Fooled the FBI

The recent dramatic revelation about W. Mark Felt--the former top FBI man who has confessed to being Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's secret source during the Watergate scandal--has yielded what seems to be the final chapter in the Deep Throat saga, and thus the conclusion to a three-decade-long whodunit rich in detail, psychology and irony.

But Felt's role as the most famous anonymous source in US history was even more complex and intrigue-loaded than the newly revised public account suggests. According to originally confidential FBI documents--some written by Felt--that were obtained by The Nation from the FBI's archives, Felt played another heretofore unknown part in the Watergate tale: He was, at heated moments during the scandal, in charge of finding the source of Woodward and Bernstein's Watergate scoops. In a twist worthy of le Carré, Deep Throat was assigned the mission of unearthing--and stopping--Deep Throat.

This placed Felt, who as the FBI's associate director oversaw the bureau's Watergate probe, in an unusual position. He was essentially in charge of investigating himself. From this vantage point Felt, who had developed espionage skills running FBI counterintelligence operations against German spies in World War II, was able to watch his own back and protect his ability to guide the two reporters whose exposés would help topple the President he served.

See, this is the part of the story the Bushseviks are down with -- it leads to things like making Alberto Gonzales the chief investigator of torture allegations at Gitmo. Or Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris the leaders in election reform. Or Tom DeLay spearheading election reform.

What on earth happened to the Tom deLay story while I was gone, anyhow?

The next shitstorm

While I was offline in Europe, I had to rely on watching CNN (awful) and reading the IHT (only slightly less awful) for English language news most of the time. (A few hotels had a BBC feed, but it seems they were convinced nothing other than the Michael Jackson trial was worth reporting on.)

One story that made it into the IHT was the fact that "a leading Chinese oil producer, CNOOC, ... was considering making a competing bid to Chevron's $16.4 billion offer for Unocal as energy demand increases pressure on China to pursue oil supplies."

The blogosphere seems strangely quiet on this one. The Downing Street memos are the better story, no doubt. But unless the DSM awakes the MSM from its torpor, the Unocal story is the opening salvo of a war that will make Iraq look like a poodle fight.

America's economy, foreign policy, internal future, and wet dreams of hegemony are all tied to cheap oil. And the way we have kept oil cheap is by being the 800-pound gorilla (also guerilla) of the world energy market. OPEC controls some of the supply, but make no mistake that American Big Oil calls the shots for the world energy market.

We all know that China's economy is growing like bamboo ( a mind-boggling 9% annual rate for the 25-year period from 1978 to 2003), and that it is increasingly willing to flex its muscles in politics and international finance. Less well-known is the fact that China is now the 2nd largest consumer of energy in the world.

Put these two facts together, and you have to look at what is going to happen as China's growing productivity and affluence collide with our SUV addiction. China, which may be less than a true free market at home, has no problem bitch slapping us with Adam Smith's invisible hand at the most macro level. So the first thing that seems to be happening is that they are trying to buy a secure supply by bidding on Big Oil.

The decision tree on this one quickly gets too difficult for me to follow. In most ways, the Bush Administration is simply the policy arm of Big Oil. Who will man the marionettes if the Chinese take control of Big Oil? Will the champions of the free market stand by if the Chinese outbid us fair and square for the energy (and control of that energy) we have taken for granted?

Today the Republicans rant about the War on Terrah, and we whine about the Republican war on the rest of us. Very soon, we will all be talking about how we lost the war for energy to the Chinese while no one was looking.

Perfect storm avoided

So Michael Jackson moonwalks away.

I imagine that the media are very disappointed. Had Jackson been convicted, allowed to stay out of jail pending sentencing, and fled the country, the media would have had the two biggest eye-off-the-ball stories merge into one -- Michael Jackson would be the missing white woman.

Oh, well.

1st Horse's Ass of the Apocalypse

My local paper is slowly drifting rightward, like every other mainstream outlet. They have been running Pat Buchanan OpEds for some time.

Today's column was a winner. To no one's surprise, Buchanan tees off on Mark Felt. The whole thing is too laughable to rebut, but a few lines bear repeating. He refers to Nixon as a "decent old man," and to the Washington Post as "the propaganda and attack arm of a Liberal Establishment" that is as vicious as the old National Conservative Political Action Committee ever was." TheFBI-Post consiracy is what Watergate was really about, sez Pat.

Strong evidence indeed of the "two Americas" hypothesis -- his America, if it ever existed, was located in a galaxy far, far away.

Tobacco Witnesses Were Told To Ease Up

Government lawyers asked two of their own witnesses to soften recommendations about sanctions that should be imposed on the tobacco industry if it lost a landmark civil racketeering case, one of the witnesses and sources familiar with the case said yesterday.

Matt Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said the Justice Department's lead trial lawyer called him May 9 to say her superiors wanted him to scale back the recommendations he had made in written testimony. They sought to remove his suggestions for a ban on tobacco company methods of marketing to young people before Myers took the stand. Myers said he refused to do so.

A second witness, scientific expert Michael Eriksen, also departed from recommendations in his earlier written testimony, court documents show. Eriksen
declined to comment, but four separate sources familiar with the case said Justice Department lawyers had asked him to do so.

I know, this one is a couple of days old, but my outrage is suffering from jet lag.

Seems to me that it is becoming ridiculously easy to predict Sith Administration behavior-- at least when there is a confluence of evil and venality.

I'm baaaaack

Anything happen while I was away?