Casualties are on the rise again, and
the Iraqi presidential council appears to be ready the new debaathification law, with Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi saying, “We cannot regard this law as a step in the national reconciliation process. The spirit of revenge is so clear in many articles of the law.”
Year: 2008
911 Panel Ececutive Driector Had Close Ties to Bush and His Evil Minions™ and Regularly Talked to Karl Rove
What a bloody surprise. Neocon, and former Concoleeza Rice aid Philip Zelikow is hired as the executive director of the 911 commission, and it turns out that we was working to protect Bush, not the country. (here, here, and here)
The problems:
- “In his book, Shenon also says that while working for the panel, Zelikow appears to have had private conversations with former White House political director Karl Rove, despite a ban on such communication, according to Holland. Shenon reports that Zelikow later ordered his assistant to stop keeping a log of his calls, although the commission’s general counsel overruled him, Holland wrote.”
- Staffers accuse him of refusing to allow a report showing Rice to be incompetent to be submitted.
- Zelikow was responsible for demoting Richard Clark, but never told the committee members about this.
- His resume given to the 911 commission omitted details of his involvement in the events leading up to 911.
- He told his secretary to stop logging his phone calls.
Zelikow claims that, “Out of 85 staffers, half a dozen were disgruntled, Zelikow told ABC News. “Under the circumstances, that was a pretty low fraction,” he said. “But they all talked to Shenon.”
No for whistleblowing, 1 out of 500 is a low fraction. 1 our of 15 is insanely high.
Natalie’s Audition at Sudbrook
My daughter, Natalie, is in 5th grade, and so will be going on to middle school next year.
She decided that she wanted to audition for a spot at the Sudbrook arts-magnet middle school. And today she auditioned.
I don’t know what happened, parents are not allowed in the auditions.
Natalie has a lovely voice, though she needs training to project her voice, and she is studying violin.
Democracy for Baltimore Meeting Tonight, 7:30pm
7:00 for meet, greet, and eat.
We are hoping to have a representative of the Donna Edwards Campaign
in the MD-4 Congressional district.
At the Cosi Cafe, 9177 Reisterstown Road, Owings Mills, MD 21117
Directions: Located in the Valley Village Plaza Strip Mall, On
the Corner of Reisterstown and McDonough (to the west) and Craddock
(to the east) Roads, diagonally across from the McDonough Road
Proifessional Center.
Free Wireless Internet Available
Closing Time: 9:00 pm.
Anne Applebaum is Stupid
Really, really, really stupid.
This time, she is claiming that capitalism created beautiful young Russian women.
I went to school with Russian emigres. I’ve seen what they look like. It was good.
There was no change in appearance. It’s just that access to the west was restricted to the well off before the fall of the FSU, and the well off mean middle aged, at least.
Anne Applebaum knows Russia, and I don’t. Anne Applebaum has been to Russia, and I haven’t. But based on my reading of her work through the years, she does not “hang” with us ordinary plebes, she hangs with the movers and shakers.
Russian women, as the saying goes, “clean up good”.
20 Years ago, that did not mean YSL or Chanel’s “little black dress”. I don’t know what Russian fashion was, but it sucked by western standards, though according to my dad, it sucked a lot less in Leningrad than it did in Moscow, at least in 1973.
Of course, Ms. Applebaum is so intent on showing the virtues of the klepto-capitalism that is Russia, she reduces what a woman is to her market value for her appearance.
C-Block Bidding: We Have A Winner, Actually TWO Winners
And one is the American wireless user, because whoever won, and the FCC has not announced a winner yet, will pay $4,713,823,000, more than the $4,600,000,000 required by the FCC in order for open access rules to apply.
The FCC has not announced a winner, and the bidders themselves are technically still gagged, but my guess is that it was not Google. They were willing to bid to win, but they were more interested in getting the open access, and why spend $113,823,000 more than the minimum to get that.
Of course, considering my record on predictions…..
Gains of the Surge Turning Into Ashes
Iraq has gotten me quoting Elvis Costello, you know, “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused”.
The Iraqi insurgency is releasing a new movie, a surge of their own.
We are back on the down slope.
Clean Coal, Toxic Water
Note that I have just added the Washington Independent to my blogroll…It’s a good source for news and commentary.
Check out this article on the toxic waste of “clean coal”.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s own research, coal ash dumping can lead to higher rates of cancer, developmental problems in children and adverse effects in women of child-bearing age. Despite the fact that coal ash contains mercury, lead, arsenic, chromium, cadmium, selenium, beryllium, and other toxic metals, the EPA has yet to categorize coal ash as hazardous waste. In addition, coal ash has been found to be up to 100 times more radioactive than nuclear waste, due to the concentrations of uranium and thorium that increase 10-fold after coal is burned.
Trouble in the Russian Arms Export Business
It appears that there has been a near freeze in weapons sales to China.
According to the report, this is driven by an incoherence in Russian technology transfer policy, which has seen extensive development and production deals with India, and very little with China, which has honked off the Chinese military establishment.
Broder Calls Out George F. Will By Name
One of the rules of OP/ED bloviating is that if you disagree with another contributor to the editorial page, you never mention them directly.
Calling them out by name is unheard of.
Well, David S. Broder, the sultan of intellect free conventional inside-the-beltway thinking, just broke that rule, and calls out the bow-tied one.
Unelected conservative ideologues — such as Rush Limbaugh and George F. Will— can mutter in frustration, but Republican politicians recognize what was written here as long ago as last Dec. 2: “If the Republican Party really wanted to hold on to the White House in 2009 . . . it would grit its teeth, swallow its doubts and nominate a ticket of John McCain for president and Mike Huckabee for vice president — and president-in-waiting.”
Matthew Yglesias makes much of this, but I disagree.
This is not a sudden abrogation of the rules. Instead it is a conflict between two rules:
- The unwritten first rule of the op-ed page — you do not talk about other writers on the op-ed page
- John McCain is a straight shooter, and a good guy, and we love him.
In critiquing John McCain, George Will simply joined the Ancient, Hermetic, and Occult Order of the Shrill, and you are supposed to call out the “shrill” ones by name.
If True, the Republican Nomination Is Done
TPM has a report that Romney has not bought any air time in the Feb 5 states, though there are some reports that they are starting to do so now.
If true, Romney has given up, and I don’t think that Huckabee can take his place,
New Rule: Our Troops, No Midieval Clerics Get the Power to Judge People
Sayed Pervez Kambaksh has been sentenced to death for blasphemy.
Hi crime, he “he downloaded a report from a Farsi website which stated that Muslim fundamentalists who claimed the Koran justified the oppression of women had misrepresented the views of the prophet Mohamed”, and “distributed the tract to fellow students and teachers at Balkh University.”
He was not allowed a lawyer. He was not allowed to speak.
We’ve turned the most secular government in the Arab world into an ethnically cleansed theocracy, and because of the resources we pulled from Afghanistan to do that, Afghanistan is heading back towards becoming…well…Afghanistan.
Heck of a job, Bushie.
Economics Update
First-time jobless claims skyrocket to 375 thousand. Last week was 306 thousand, so it’s about a 20% increase, and well over the consensus estimate of 320 thousand first time claims, though week to week data points are always noisy.
That being said, Consumer spending slowing in December, up only 0.2% from November is a lot less noisy, and at least as scary. First, 0.2% is a drop in real dollars, and second, this was December, the height of greed and excess season.
And in the “another day, another downgrade department”, S&P is looking at downgrading about $500 billion more in mortgage related securities.
We are not near the bottom.
Tom Davis (R-VA) Out
His wife, a state senator, lost in 2006, and I guess he figures that it’s a sign or something.
Buh by.
Signs of the Apocalypse: Jim Cramer Trashes “Laissez Fair”
Yes, this is the Cramer of “Mad Money”, and yes, he is generally to the right of Atilla the Hun, he supported Alan Keyes in 2008, and at a speech at Bucknell University, he condemned laissez fair politics:
“Do not be fooled by the sirens of laissez faire,” he told a packed audience at Bucknell University’s Weis Center for the Performing Arts in the continuing national speakers series, “The Bucknell Forum: The Citizen & Politics in America.”
“Ever since the (President) Reagan era, our nation has been regressing and repealing years and years worth of safety net and equal economic justice in the name of discrediting and dismantling the federal government’s missions to help solve our nation’s collective domestic woes,” he said. “We call it deregulation … a covert attempt to eliminate the federal government’s domestic responsibilities.”
When Jim Cramer is forced to come to his senses, you know something is whack.
And Now Bush is Maintaining that He Can Ignore Congress on Spending
In the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008, Congress prohibited the use of federal funds to “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq” or “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.” it also,
….requires intelligence agencies to turn over “any existing intelligence assessment, report, estimate or legal opinion” requested by the leaders of the House and Senate armed services committees within 45 days. If the president wants to assert executive privilege to deny the request, the law says, White House counsel must do so in writing.
Finally, Bush’s signing statement raised constitutional questions about a section of the bill that established an independent, bipartisan “Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan” to investigate allegations of waste, mismanagement, and excessive force by contractors.
Bush’s response, “Nyah, nyah, nayh, I’m president“, in a signing statement.
A prohibition on spending by the congress is legally binding on a president, even it makes his job “hard work”.
This is why having impeachment on the table is a necessary thing:
NOT ON THE TABLE! NOT ON THE TABLE!
Confronting the State Secrets Privilege
The folks at FAS have an interesting post on the House Judiciary committee reviewing abuses of the state secrets privilige.
Basically, it’s the wide latitude that courts give the executive to claim that something is too secret for them to be sued, you know, things like torture, kickbacks, and other forms of corruption.
Lots of meaty stuff there.
I wish [the enemy] would just blow mine up so I could be done with it.
The words of a soldier on the Stryker mobile gun system deployed to Iraq.
The reviews from the soldiers are in, and they hate it.
Your military industrial complex at work.
Problems in Florida Voting, Big Surprise
Simply put, government under conservatives does not work, as shown with the voting problems.
Even after what happened in 2000, it did not get fixed.
Screen Actors Guild Strike Update
The short version of this letter to the membership of the SAG is that the Directors Guild of America cut a deal that sucked.
This is not surprising, the DGA is a weak and stupid union, and they have gotten too small a cut, and allowed the producers to define their accounting too loosely.