I’m not a Catholic, but the idea of sex in a confessional booth just boggles my mind.
Month: June 2008
USAF Bombs Pakistani Soldiers, and it Pisses Them Off
Go figure. A trigger happy, “shoot first and ask questions later”, doctrine, and when we kill their soldiers, it pisses off our nominal ally Pakistan.
They called it a “cowardly act”.
Actions like this put all aid from Pakistan at risk.
Obama Calls McCain Credit Card Companies’ Bitch
Well, I am paraphrasing, but he is saying that Mr. “Let’s Do a Favor for Charles Keating”, has ignored the problems created by abusive lending practices of the credit card and mortgage industry.
This is a good tactic. There is a reason why brutal thugs like Bonnie and Clyde became folk heroes, and it’s because Americans hate banks.
Zimbabwe: Archbishop Tutu Calls for Mugabe to Step Down, Reports of Negociations
Well, finally someone with some moral authority is stating the obvious, that Mugabe’s, “regime has turned into a horrendous nightmare”.
There are reports of Znegociations regarding a power sharing arrangement too, but the MDC is saying that this is premature.
Bitch Slapped
It looks like the right wing screamers just got to mount Jim Johnson’s head on their wall.
He has resigned as one of the members of Obama’s VP vetting committee.
We are back to the bitch slap theory of Republican politics.
It’s not about them being right, it’s about them making Obama look weak, which they did.
Bush Threatens Amtrak Veto
With mass transit and rail use skyrocketing, Bush is threatening a veto of the Amtrak budget, arguing that there needs to be less subsidies, despite the fact that rail passenger services world wide are subsidized, and that there should be private competition.
Private competition, huh? Who knew that Halliburton was getting into passenger rail?
Lobbying Shop Tied to Sweeney Raided By FBI
It turns out that in addition to being tied to Sweeney, the Albany lobbying firm Powers & Company was also tied to Jack Abramhoff.
After the wife beating and drunk driving, who knew that former Congresscritter John Sweeney would be tied into Abramhoff?
I’m shocked.
Republicans Running Away From Bush on Unemployment Extension
I think that the fact that extending unemployment benefits is extremely popular with voters is why the Democrats split it out of the Iraq authorization.
They want as many Republicans as possible to have to choose between their political future and George W. Bush.
Voting against this will not look good in November.
How Long Will It Take Arlen Specter to Cave on This?
Now Specter is saying that wiretapping should require some sort of judicial review.
That’s nice, but considering your record, we also know that when it finally comes down to a vote, you will snivel and vote with the Neanderthals in the party.
Been down this road before.
Korea Flips Out Over US Beef Imports
There are lots of people out there who have significant concerns about the safety of US food.
Perhaps if the AG department wasn’t spending more time promoting big AG’s agenda than actually regulating food safety, as it has with it’s ban on testing for mad cow, its definition of “organic”, and its attempt to ban milk labeled “BGH free”, we would have less concern.
US NATO Rep Boosts Russian Membership in Alliance
This proposal is actually good policy, as Russia continues to see, with no small justification, NATO as a military institution directed against it.
That being said, she doesn’t really mean it:
“Speaking as a mom and as a strategist and a lifetime student and friend of the Russian people, I would love to live in a world where Russia wanted to be a NATO member and Russia had met the very high standards that NATO sets for openness, democracy, reform, rule of law that new NATO members must meet,” Victoria Nuland said in an interview with RIA Novosti and the Argumenty i Fakty weekly.
What she’s saying is that she wants Russia to be more like western nations, and then she would consider it.
When one considers the fact that at least two NATO nations, Greece and Turkey, spent much of their time in the cold war under military rule from a Junta, I would think that Russia has already met that standard.
Seriously though, Russian membership in NATO would go a long way towards easing relations.
As I’ve said before, the eastern expansion of NATO following the collapse of the Berlin wall was a bad idea, and this is one of the few ways to undue the damage done.
As to why the original NATO members enthusiastically expanded eastward, I think that it was two things, uncritical euphoria at the fall of the Warsaw Pact, and the desire for arms sales in the newly liberated countries.
Supreme Court Reaffirms Patent Exhaustion
The case is LG Electronics vs Quanta, where LG licensed the technology to Intel, who made the chips used, but wanted to charge buyers of the chips an additional royalty.
Basically, patent exhaustion says that if someone licenses a patent from you, and they sell stuff made with that patent to someone else, the recipient can use that stuff without any more restrictions. It’s a 100 year old precident, but the patent court decided to ignore it.
You can find a very good primer on why this happened here.
The district court ruled for Quanta, but the patent court ruled for LG on appeal, and the Supreme Court completely reversed the patent court, which is becoming a regular thing.
The special patent court is out of control and needs to be abolished.
President Backs Down on Contraversial Spy Law
Unfortunately, it’s not the US president who did this. It’s Venezuela’s president, who reversed himself on a controversial security law.
Hugo Chavez has a better understanding of the will of the people, and of reality, than George W. Bush.
Frightening, isn’t it.
Do Not Send Money to These Bush Blue Dogs
One of the things Tim Mahoney and Allen Boyd, both of Florida, won’t do is endorse Barack Obama for president.
These are both folks who have received lots of support from the Democratic grass roots, Mahoney is in Mark “Just as soon as I get to the end of the page” Foley’s old seat following the sex scandal, and when the time comes for them to do little things, like endorse the Democrat, or in Mahoney’s case, criticize John McCain for opposing Mahoney’s own insurance relief bill, they just don’t have the guts.
Screw them.
Lobbyists Complaining About Obama Donation Ban
Good. It means that he’s done something right.
So are some Congressman, or at least that’s what the lobbyists say in the article.
Seriously though, is there any reason for Steny Hoyer to have, “received a higher percentage of his campaign contributions from PACs this cycle than has any other member of Congress?” He’s in a completely safe district. He could win if he spent 50 bucks on his hole campaign.
Two snaps up from me.
Gates Bitch Slaps Fighter Mafia
Since 1984, the Air force chiefs have staff have all been former fighter pilots. Before that, they were all bomber pilots.
With the appointment of General Norton Schwartz, who flew C-130s and AC-130s, it’s clear that Robert Gates is slapping down the so called “fighter mafia” hard.
What’s more, Vice Chief is now General William Fraser III, a former bomber pilot, which is another slap at the fighter jock leadership culture.
Maybe now, we can start seeing the Air Force do something useful at the upper leadership.
Bush May Not Get His Iraq Deal
At least that’s what unnamed sources are saying. They are expecting a short term extension of the UN mandate.
Considering the fact that they are asking for immunity for mercenary thugs like Black Water, the right to engage in attacks without consulting the Iraqi government, near complete control of their airspace, and 58 bases in Iraq, it’s nor surprising that Maliki is not happy about this deal.
Talk About Lowered Expectations
The ‘Phants are now saying that if they only lose 8 seats out of the 23 seats of theirs up for election, it’s a victory, because they can theoretically still stop cloture.
There are a bunch of seriously depressed Republicans in Congress.
Bush Fired Rove In Church
Boy, the Avignon president is a really classy guy:
If you’re going to fire someone, you want to make sure you do it in a place where the now-unemployed can’t make a scene.
You know…a place like, say, a church.
That, according to a new book – “Machiavelli’s Shadow” – by former Time magazine reporter Paul Alexander, is where President George W. Bush informed trusted advisor Karl Rove in 2007 that his services would no longer be needed at the White House.
“On a Sunday in midsummer, George W. Bush accompanied Karl Rove to the Episcopalian Church Rove sometimes attended,” writes Alexander. “They made their way to the front of the congregation. Then, during their time in the church, Bush gave Rove some stunning news. ‘Karl,’ Bush said, ‘there’s too much heat on you. It’s time for you to go.’”
It appears that Rove is a screamer, and Bush was afraid that he would be shouted at.
But according to the Republican party, Bush is really brave for sending soldiers to die in Iraq.
Pathetic.
Boy…Firing a man in church because you were afraid he would be angry with you? Bush is one classy dude.
Economics Update
China, in response to inflationary pressures, and the fact that a number of their banks are insolvent by western standards, just hiked their reserve requirements, meaning that they have to keep more in reserve, and lend less out of their deposits, which, not surprisingly has tanked Asian markets.
Given that the US trade deficit widened under the pressure of rising oil prices, there may be another purpose: to slow things down before US demand drops off a cliff, particularly when Ben Bernanke is signaling rate hike strongly.
In any case, oil fell a bit, but gasoline is still hitting new records, which implies that a lot of money is still going to petro-economies.
It looks like the British Bankers Association may be taking steps to fix the problems with LIBOR reporting, where this critical rate looks increasingly to have been gamed by member banks, by tightening scrutiny on the transactions, though they are still whining about how it will hurt, “What we do here in the U.K. must match others … maintaining competitiveness is essential to the U.K. industry.”
If you crank out phony numbers, it will hurt your bank more than any other thing that you can do.
Meanwhile, back in the good old USA, Q1 delinquencies rose 62% over a year ago.