Following the massive Taliban prison break, we are seeing intense combat through the south of the country.
If half the troops in Iraq were there, we’d be doing much better.
Year: 2008
Israel and Hamas Truce Starts Today
As always, I am pessimistic regarding the likelihood of this turning out well…..It’s the Middle East.
Clinton and Obama to Hold Fundraiser
Hillary Clinton is not being half hearted in her support for Obama, as some people *cough* MSNBC *cough* suggested that she would be.
She is tying him in with her donor base at this meeting.
Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon’s House Raided
I was wondering when this shoe would drop.
My take is that she likely did something wrong, though whether it rises to the level of a major crime, I don’t know, because she has a long history of nepotism and favors for friends and relatives, see here and here, and she has done this repeatedly.
It should be an interesting few months.
U.S. Pins Car Boming on Sadr Groups
This assertion is highly suspect. The idea that Sadr’s Mahdi militia, a Shia militant group, and one which has no history of things like this, just bombed a market in a Shi’ite neighborhood…
I call bull sh@#.
“Dollar Bill” Jefferson to Run for Re-election
William Jefferson (D-LA), who was found with $90,000.00 in his freezer, and has since been indicted, is running for another term.
This is an embarrassment.
“There is no longer any doubt that the current administration committed war crimes.”
So says retired Antonio Taguba, who oversaw the review of the Abu Ghraib scandal, and was then forced out when the report told the truth, in the introduction to the report from Physicians for Human Rights on torture under US detention, which uses, among other things, the roadmap of scars on its victims:
Neither the Bush administration nor the Pentagon commented on the unpublished report yesterday. President Bush has repeatedly said he does not condone torture and allows interrogation techniques that are aggressive but legal.
The report challenges that contention with a detailed physical and psychological profile of each of the former detainees. In two of the cases, the medical investigators had access to the subjects’ recent medical records. All 11 men were given pseudonyms for their protection, according to the report.
The doctors found that “Kamal,” an Iraqi in his late 40s held from September 2003 until June 2004 at Abu Ghraib, has a lesion near his right ear that is “consistent with a healed cut from a sharp-edged instrument,” according to the report. He also had another wound by his left ear, described as “a healed puncture injury” that matches “Kamal’s description of being stabbed with a screwdriver in his cheek by a soldier,” the report states.
Psychologically, “Kamal’s clinical presentation, reported history of abuse, and the result of psychological testing support the presence of several psychiatric diagnoses,” including depression, a panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the report.
A subject named “Amir,” an Iraqi in his late 20s held in Abu Ghraib prison from August 2003 to January 2005, “showed signs of rectal tearing that are highly consistent with his report of having been sodomized with a broomstick,” the report found.
“Yasser,” another Abu Ghraib detainee in his mid-40s, had scars on his thumbs and irregularities in the contours of his tongue, according to the report. The medical team concluded that the damage supports his contention that his American captors subjected him to electric shocks.
The problem here torture always follows the soldiers home. The people who were ordered to to this will come home, and many of them will end up in law enforcement, where they will do the same to someone who they think is not sufficiently respectful at a traffic stop.
The only answer is accountability at the very highest levels. By this, I do not mean that it stops at Rumsfeld. Bush and Cheney need to spend most of the rest of their lives in jail.
Tanker, Oh Tanker
The G.A.O. has ruled against the Air Force on Boeing’s protest, which probably means a rebid.
I’m kind of surprised. After Boeing bribed the Pentagon acquisition officer, I figured that they would have handled this better.
I also figure that when you chose the plane that is:
- Already flying.
- Just as cheap.
- Offloads more gas further away from base.
- Has a contracting team with a better record of being on time and on budget.
That it’s tough to screw up the process.
Needless to say, Boeing is doing a happy dance about all of this.
The GAO language is fairly strong, which means that a recompete is almost certain.
If Obama’s folks have any guts, they will have proxies demagogue the hell out of this against McCain, who killed the original corrupt deal.
Economics Update
Well, I’d be worried if I had to job search, because about 1/3 of employers surveyed by the Business Roundtable expect layoffs in the next 6 months.
Needless to say oil heading back up, and the dollar heading down would indicate that those 1/3 of executives surveyed are being prudent, even if retail gasoline prices fell for the 2nd day in a row, which hasn’t happened in quite a long time.
Currency gets even more interesting when one realizes that the Chinese Yuan has gained 20% vs the dollar since it’s been allowed to “kind of sort of float” against the dollar by pegging to a basket of currency, it’s gone from 1 Yuan= $0.1208 to 1 Yuan=$0.1453.
What’s more, it looks like a strong Yuan may be the only way for the Chinese to keep their inflation down, by cooling off exports and lowering the cost of imports, particularly food and fuel, so they may continue to take actions to strengthen their currency, essentially exporting their inflation to us.
Real estate continues to suck too, with mortgage application volume falling last week and the Architecture Billings Index dropping two points.
Steny’s Telco Deal: Time for Obama to Step Up and Stop It
There is a deal for telco immunity going that Steny Hoyer is shepherding through congress, and as American Civil Liberties Union says, it stinks.
The court review consists of only verifying that the telcos got a letter from Bush and His Evil Minions™. Glenn Greenwald has the skinny on what is going on, and it’s Hoyer who is at the center of passing a law that will cover up for the Bush’s illegal wire tapping (and probably spying on political opponents).
If you want to do something, check out the Blue America PAC vs Retroactive Immunity, which has raised about $180K in the past 24 hours to target someone.
This betrayal goes beyond party politics, so if you live in Hoyer’s district, MD-5, don’t vote for him in the general election.
One bit of bright news in all this is that the New York Times came out against the Telco immunity deal today. What’s more they called for Obama to do something more than just vote against it.
Word up on that. Obama is now the de facto leader of the Democratic party, and he needs to make it clear that this deal is not good for the country.
[Update] I just checked Greewald’s latest, and it now appears that Hoyer is trying to pretend that he hasn’t been working for this for months, but instead it’s all those Bush Blue Dogs that are making him do it.
Bull sh$@!
FWIW, we now know that the targets of the campaign, and the nearly two hundred thousand dollars raised for it, will be Steny Hoyer, Chris Carney, and John Barrow, the latter two having been the most prominent of the Vichy Democrats on this issue.
Note that the primary for Barrow is not until July, and he has an opponent with a lot more progressive cred, Regina Thomas, who I have added to my act blue page so money spent against him could defeat him in July.
No surprise, all of them are big recipients of telco largess by way of campaign contributions.
Your best place for updates is Glenn Greenwald’s blog.
More F$#@ed Up Real Estate Press Coverage
So, the real estate market in Manhattan is finally softening, and what lead article from blithering idiot Leslie P. Norton?
Signs of cracks in Manhattan’s property market could mean the rest of the country is on the road to recovery, since New York tends to feel the effects of a slowing economy later than the nation does. One segment still in the stratosphere: luxury condos and co-ops in exclusive buildings.
So, it could mean that the market is turning around…..or it could mean that that space aliens have abducted you and replaced you with a robot.
What it means that prices are dropping in Manhattan, which indicates a down market in Manhattan.
How does that saying go, ahhh…yes:
For example, given the premise, “all fish live underwater” and “all mackerel are fish”, my wife will conclude, not that “all mackerel live underwater”, but that “if she buys kippers it will not rain”, or that “trout live in trees”, or even that “I do not love her any more.” This she calls “using her intuition”. I call it “crap”….
And it gets me very irritated too.
We Hid Prisoners from the Red Cross
Hey, if it’s not illegal torture, why was so much effort spent covering it up?
The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.
“We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques,” Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who’s since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to “break” detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. “True, but officially it is not happening,” she is quoted as having said.
…
These people need to spend the rest of their lives in jail.
A Counter-Intuitive Point on the Food Criss
George Monbiot notes that smaller farms actually produced more food per acre than large ones.
He notes that he agrees with Robert Mugabe is right, that land reform is crucial in agricultural production and food security, and then further notes:
Of course the old bastard has done just the opposite. He has evicted his opponents and given land to his supporters. He has failed to support the new settlements with credit or expertise, with the result that farming in Zimbabwe has collapsed. The country was in desperate need of land reform when Mugabe became president. It remains in desperate need of land reform today.
Which is, of course, completely true.
In his extensively footnoted essay, which also appeared in the The Grauniad*, he notes that in nearly every case where it has been examined, smaller farms outperform larger ones.
Of course, the developed world is working against this reality:
Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production; by developing plants which either won’t breed true or which don’t reproduce at all, it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate. As it captures both the wholesale and retail markets, it seeks to reduce its transaction costs by engaging only with major sellers. If you think that supermarkets are giving farmers in the UK a hard time, you should see what they are doing to growers in the poor world. As developing countries sweep away street markets and hawkers’ stalls and replace them with superstores and glossy malls, the most productive farmers lose their customers and are forced to sell up. The rich nations support this process by demanding access for their companies. Their agricultural subsidies still help their own, large farmers to compete unfairly with the small producers of the poor world.
Obviously, as he concludes, the moves of people to buy into “fair trade” agricultural practices do more than lift small farmers out of abject poverty. They actually produce more food for everyone in the end.
It is remarkable just how destructive, and just plain evil the agricultural practices of the Western World are.
*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”
DNC To File FEC Complaint Against McCain
The facts are pretty clear, even though he never took money, he opted in, and then he got a campaign loan on the basis of that opt-in.
Unfortunately, Bush is replacing the FEC chair who has been calling him out on it.
The Dems should hammer McCain on this ruthlessly. After all, the law he is breaking, is one he wrote.
Grand Jury Looking Into US Attorney Purge
Even if the purge did not break the law, it appears that there are some juicy perjury charges out there.
It ain’t the crime, it’s the cover-up.
Hopefully, abu Gonzalez goes to jail over this.
Mexico Revamps Justice System
Mexico has completely revamped its justice system, the high points are:
- The presumption of innocence (I guess they must have continued the Code Napoléon from their brief time as a French posession).
- Public trials.
- Allowing lawyers to argue orally before judges (it was all written briefs before).
- Improvements to the public defender system.
- Gives state and local police departments the power to investigate their own corruption, which had previously been an exclusively federal purview.
All in all, it looks like major improvements, though considering the starting point, this is not difficult.
I agree with the civil libertarians who are concerned about the 80 days detention without charge though.
Threat of Demand to Leave in Iraq Status of Forces Agreement
It appears that Nouri al-Maliki is suggesting that it is possible that US forces will be asked to leave.
This is not, I think, a real position, but it indicates that he and his allies are willing to play some hardball in the negotiations.
Were US troops to leave, half the parliament, as well as Maliki, would be strung up from lamp posts in the next month.
Donna Edwards Wins Special Election in MD-4
She crushed Peter James with more than 70% of the vote, and she is a lead pipe cinch to win in November, so she will have a bit of a leg up in terms of seniority over the other freshman Congressmen.
Of course, the election did cost a bit of money. Maybe we should send the bill to Al Wynn, whose resignation in his eagerness to cash in on a lobbying gig led to the election.
Mugabe Calls on Opposition to Stop Breaking Batons With Their Skulls
Also, I believe that he objects at the opposition’s attempts to stain perfectly good steel toed boots with their blood.
I am, of course, speaking metaphorically. He’s actually threatening to arrest members of the opposition because he claims that they are instigating violence.
I actually find it reassuring. We in the US don’t have the most shameless leader in the world.
People Who Need to Get a Life, Or At Least a Sense of Humor
The American Medical Association (AMA):
Last week, the advocacy arm of the powerful physicians’ group unleashed a tsk-tsk campaign against “The Incredible Hulk,” a Marvel film that opened on Friday and is distributed by Universal Pictures. The complaint was of “gratuitous depictions of smoking.”
In the movie, which drew a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America, General Thunderbolt Ross, a bad guy played by William Hurt, is rarely seen without a smoke-spewing cigar. (Presumably, the physicians’ association worries that children who identify with the authoritarian general who wants to annihilate the Hulk, played by Edward Norton may be tempted to pick up the habit.)
Dianne Fenyk, president of the advocacy group, AMA Alliance, is particularly infuriated because General Ross did not smoke in “Hulk,” the 2003 film directed by Ang Lee, though he always smoked in the comic books. …..
Dianne Fenyk is arguably the 2nd most overemployed induhvidual in the United States.